


On the Importance of Workplace Synergy

by anarchetypal



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - GTA, Banter, Canon-Typical Violence, Dysfunctional Relationships, Fake AH Crew, M/M, deliberately vague heist details, general bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-12-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 03:49:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 29,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2567144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anarchetypal/pseuds/anarchetypal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things are better, now, than they used to be. Tentative and weird, but better. Michael lives in the most expensive penthouse Los Santos has to offer, and he knows how everyone likes their coffee, and it’s disgustingly domestic, almost, except how they’re all fucking each other and committing high-stakes crimes on the regular.</p>
<p>(“Alright, boys,” Geoff says. His coffee sits untouched on the table, the way it does whenever he’s particularly excited about something, the way it will stay until he’s laid out the plan completely. “This one’s gonna be good.”</p>
<p>“We’re going to steal the Declaration of Independence,” Ray whispers.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s a heist for recognition more than anything else. The take’ll be huge, sure, but Geoff says that’s just icing on the cake.

Not that they’re a small-name crew as it is. Since Geoff brought Ryan in, they’ve grown a lot, able to take on bigger and better heists. Michael goes places now and people he’s never met before know who he is.

And Geoff’s got connections for days. They need access to a helicopter, a plane, a _tank_ , and it’s theirs within twenty-four hours. A couple months ago, Michael needed a flight out of Los Santos to visit his idiot brother who’d gotten into a car accident—later that day, Jack handed him a plane ticket for a flight that was supposed to be booked solid.

But it’s been a while since they’ve done anything big, and Geoff likes to keep up appearances.

He lays out the plan on a Saturday, too early in the morning to be anything but torturous. Michael’s only half awake, going through the motions of making coffee without paying much attention to what he’s doing.

It’d probably be safer to just abandon the effort before he ends up doing something like dumping salt into his mug or trying to percolate flour instead of ground coffee beans, but right now he needs caffeine with the sort of blind intensity that would put a heroin addict to _shame_.

Gavin, even less conscious than he is, is leaning solidly against his back. Michael pushes him away before he can actually fall asleep standing up.

Yawning, he leans against the counter to wait for the coffee to brew while Gavin stumbles in the general direction of the living room, flops heavily onto one of the couches, and only barely avoids landing on Ray’s legs on his way down. Ray, for his part, just pulls the hood of his jacket farther down over his face and props his feet up on Gavin’s lap.

“Might help to turn it on.”

Michael glances over in time to see Ryan reach over and start up the coffee pot. He blinks as it starts to burble. “Don’t question my coffee-making abilities. I know what I’m doing.”

“And what _were_ you doing?”

“Waiting for it to let its guard down. You have to take it by surprise.”

Ryan shakes his head. “What time did you go to bed?” He somehow manages to look completely awake at— Jesus, barely seven in the morning. Michael resents him a little for it.

Still, he grins. “About the same time Gavin and Ray did,” he says.

“He’s talking about sex,” Ray deadpans from the living room.

Ryan snorts. “Got it, yeah.”

He helps Michael juggle six mugs from the kitchen to the living room just as Geoff and Jack walk in. Ryan nudges Ray and Gavin until they make room for him on one couch while Geoff and Jack take the other. It says something about how much time they spend with one another that Michael doesn’t have to ask anyone how they want their coffee; he sets each mug down on the coffee table in front of their respective owners before sitting down between Geoff and Jack with his own.

Gavin, typically, takes Ray’s by mistake, and they bicker about it while Geoff lays a map out on the table.

More often than not these days, they’re all sleeping under one roof. Geoff has rooms for all of them. They don’t stay always, but even Ryan claimed a room, the one at the end of the front hall with guns under the bed and his own version of a bug-out bag at the door.

It’s better this way, Michael thinks, than it used to be—when Geoff had to call them in from anywhere and everywhere. Michael stayed at a cheap apartment at the edge of town, Ray used to bounce from shitty motel to shitty motel in the city, and Ryan would always show up from who knew where jetlagged to hell with bags under his eyes. They tried to stay centered around Los Santos as a general base of operation, but work and lifestyle had them spread out.

So it’s better, now. Tentative and weird, but better. Michael lives in the most expensive penthouse Los Santos has to offer, and he knows how everyone likes their coffee, and it’s disgustingly domestic, almost, except how they’re all fucking each other and committing high-stakes crimes on the regular.

“Alright, boys,” Geoff says. His coffee sits untouched on the table, the way it does whenever he’s particularly excited about something, the way it will stay until he’s laid out the plan completely. “This one’s gonna be good.”

“We’re going to steal the Declaration of Independence,” Ray whispers.

Geoff ignores him. “Straightforward heist this go-round.”

“What, no picking up tanks with a cargobob?” Ryan murmurs into his coffee cup.

“Nope,” Geoff says brightly. “Hitting an armored truck and a bank. But don’t tempt me, Ryan.”

Gavin frowns, fingers tapping on his mug. “Not very exciting, is it? Thought you said this was a heist for recognition. We hit a bank last month.”

“Bigger bank this time,” Jack says. Geoff uncaps a marker with his teeth and circles a spot on the map in bright red. Michael leans forward to get a better look.

And, yeah.

It’s a bigger bank.

The Union Depository is where all the big-wigs keep their shit. The bank holds money and jewelry and, like, expensive _paintings_ , Michael’s heard. The rich and famous and powerful from all over the city hold accounts there because it’s prestigious and because it’s guarded like Fort fucking Knox. Michael hasn’t heard of _anybody_ making it out of there alive with a substantial take, so of course it’s the one Geoff wants to hit.

Ray’s the one who finally says something. “Geoff.”

“Yeah, buddy?”

“ _How_ is this supposed to be straightforward?”

\-----

So, okay, it’s not straightforward. It’s actually going take more planning and setup than most of their past heists combined—which is a good thing, Michael tells himself, because they’re going to need all the prep work in the world to pull this off.

It’s hard to act skeptical, though. Geoff’s excitement is infectious, and as he lays out the plan, it doesn’t take long for Michael’s hands to start itching to wrap around a steering wheel, a gun, a bank-wrapped stack of cash.

“What do you guys think?” Geoff asks finally, tossing down his notes and looking at them all expectantly. There’s a beat of silence.

Ray clears his throat. “Right,” he says, “I’m all for it, except—and this is just a suggestion—maybe instead of doing that, we could _not_ do that.”

“Ray.”

“I’m a reckless asshole, Geoff, but I’m not suicidal. Do you seriously think we can pull this off?”

Geoff sighs. “Honestly? No, I’m not. That’s where the research and surveillance come in. I mean it—if I’m not confident we can run this thing clean, we won’t do it.” He grins. “But we’re gonna find out if we can. And if we can? It’s gonna go down as one of the best heists Los Santos has ever seen. Look me in the eye and tell me you aren’t interested in being a part of this.”

That seems to pacify Ray a little. He smiles, shaking his head. “Alright. Cut the inspirational music already—I’m with you.”

“Of course you are. Anything else?”

Ryan raises his hand like grade school kid.

Geoff snorts and calls on him dutifully. “Is this actually important?”

“I’m insulted you would imply that I ever have something to add that is anything _less_ than important, Geoff.”

“Out with it.”

“Do we get masks?” Ryan asks, and then ducks, laughing, when Geoff launches a pillow at him.

\-----

Prep work starts slow—Geoff makes a bunch of phone calls for a few days, and he and Jack go meet up with people for information and deal-making. It’s times like these Michael remembers just how good a team they make. Half their communication is silent, shared looks and body language and the odd sigh.

He’d asked Geoff once how they’d gotten together—didn’t specify in terms of work or a relationship—and Geoff had grinned. “I was shit-faced,” he’d replied simply, “and Jack was a sucker. Ask him about Queens if you really want to get him riled up.”

When he’d done as much, Jack had just smiled, shaken his head, said, “Someone needed to baby-sit him,” and left it at that.

But it feels good to have the two of them working cohesively. They’re working to do something nobody’s pulled off before, and some of the concern leaches from Michael’s shoulders when he sees them bent over a stack of notes, making plans, keeping everything together.

Geoff wants to get Gavin access to the Union Depository’s security footage. “I want to know exactly what we’re working with,” he says. “Camera placements, guard schedules, the works. No surprises.”

After a few days, Jack manages to get his hands on blueprints for the place. Ryan poses as an IT guy over the phone to get intel without raising any suspicion, gets a hold of the security records, relevant names, some general info on the vault. Ray knows a few employees on the inside from his drug work and says he might be able to call in a couple favors.

Back when he first moved to Los Santos, Michael worked for a repair company that did electric and plumbing and other general handyman stuff. He got called in a couple times to go to the Union Depository, one time to repair an elevator, the other to help reroute a fire sprinkler system. He got a little official nametag to clip to his uniform, and he kept the thing. Geoff thinks it’s as good a ruse as any to get him into the building if they need that to happen and tells him to bring it from his apartment.

Jack says Geoff needs to stop watching Ocean’s Eleven.

Michael’s heading back to Geoff’s place after grabbing the nametag and a few other things from his apartment—why he even bothers to keep the place, he’s not completely sure, but the rent is more than manageable, and it feels good to have a place to go that isn’t a motel when he wants a night to himself, and they’ve used the place as a safe house a few times before, so it’s a decent investment.

He stops by their warehouse on his way back across the city to drop off a file Jack gave him to give to Geoff. They’ve worked out of that warehouse for ages now; Geoff maintains it’s the best money he’s ever spent on a building, including his penthouse suite.

Ryan called it a shithole when he first joined up with them and still calls it a shithole now, and Michael can’t really argue with that, because it sort of makes the Motel 6 in the middle of fucking Crack Cocaine County look like the Buckingham Palace. It’s not _dirty_ , really, but there are some suspicious blood stains and they’re not as good about cleaning the place up as they should be, and it’s not the most structurally-sound place in Los Santos.

The atmosphere is pretty great for torture interrogation, though, which is what Geoff uses the warehouse for most days now.

Michael parks his car around back and lets himself in. It’s lit sparsely, the only strong lights coming from one of the separated rooms all the way at the end. It’s mostly silent, save the sound of a low, threatening voice and what Michael guesses is someone protesting through a gag.

Sounds like a party.

He heads in that direction, file in hand, the multiple lights sending shadows across boxes and fold-out tables and a couple of motorcycles. When he pokes his head into the room, he sees Geoff leaning over a guy tied to a chair, gagged and bleeding. Geoff’s holding him by the hair tight enough to make the guy snarl, a pistol held loosely in his other hand.

Michael coughs.

Geoff turns and smiles beatifically. “Hey!” he greets. There’s drying blood spattered across his jaw. “I’ll be done here soon.”

Michael holds up the manila folder and uses it to fan himself. “Got your file. And may I say how _thrilled_ I am to be demoted to delivery boy?”

Geoff grins at him and crosses the room, reaching out to take the folder from him. “Some people would kill for the opportunity to deliver shit to me.”

“I _have_ killed for this opportunity to deliver shit to you, and I gotta say, not all it’s cracked up to be— No, gross, you have blood on your face, don’t kiss me,” Michael protests, turning his head away.

Geoff laughs and backs off. “What, too kinky?”

“No, it _stops_ being kinky when it’s someone else’s blood."

Geoff grins wickedly. “So you’re implying that if it’s your _own_ blood...”

Michael just raises an eyebrow and smirks faintly.

“ _Well_. I’ll keep that in mind.” Geoff tosses the folder on the table next to Michael after leafing through it for a minute, then turns back to the guy in the chair and walks over. If the expression on the guy’s face is any indication, he’d clearly been hoping that Geoff had forgotten about him.

“You need any help?” Michael asks.

Geoff looks thoughtfully at the guy, who’s glowering. “Nah, I’ve got it. The shipment come in alright?”

“Yeah, Kdin’s gonna call later to give you the numbers. And Gavin wants to know if it’s okay to start looking into the security cameras for the heist?”

Geoff sighs and runs a hand down his face. “Shit. Yeah, tell him to go ahead and get started on that. Toss me that knife?”

Michael picks up a pocket knife from the table and throws it underhand to Geoff, who catches it and flicks it open casually, heedless of the way the guy starts struggling wildly and swearing muffledly behind the gag. “I’m gonna head back to the apartment if you’ve got this covered. Ryan’s making that really elaborate pot roast of his and I don’t want to miss out.”

Geoff takes another look at the guy and frowns, toying with the knife. “Tell Ryan to put some aside for me if I don’t make it back in time to eat with you guys. Should be finishing up soon, but you know how it is.” He gives a little sigh, like he’s some nine-to-five office worker stuck working late and not implying that he’s about to kill a man.

Michael fucking loves him.

\-----

Once Michael gives him the go-ahead for the security tapes, Gavin disappears into his room, laptop under his arm, a determined expression on his face. Hours later, Michael gives a friendly tap on the door on his way to bed but doesn’t disturb him, both because he values his life and also because if Gavin didn’t kill him with the power of his annoyance, he’d rope Michael into looking at some of the security footage while talking about camera angles for twelve million years, and Michael’s got better things to do, like sleep, or just literally anything other than that.

Gavin doesn’t reappear until midafternoon the next day. Michael’s hanging out in the living room with the others when Gavin, bags under his eyes and not quite stumbling around in exhaustion, walks through the living room, tosses his notebook onto the table, and heads straight to the pantry in the kitchen.

He emerges a moment later with three cookies stacked between his teeth, a box of hostess cupcakes in one hand and a bag of chips in the other.

Michael stares. “Did you forget to eat again?” he asks.

Gavin makes a sheepish, muffled noise of affirmation. He gets about halfway to the couch, pauses in consideration, turns around, then goes back into the kitchen and practically dives into the refrigerator.

“If you didn’t get so caught up in camera work, this wouldn’t happen,” Jack says disapprovingly.

Gavin returns to the living room, arms piled with food, mouth full. He sets everything down on the coffee table and sort of rearranges it like he’s got a plan of attack. He swallows. “I remembered to stay hydrated this time,” he says, sounding proud about it.

Ryan walks in, raises an eyebrow at Gavin’s feast, and shakes his head. “Take it slow,” he warns, walking into the kitchen and opening the refrigerator. “Unless you want a repeat of last time.”

Gavin, mouth full again, just gives Ryan a thumbs up and continues to demolish a leftover carton of Chinese takeout.

Geoff reaches hopefully for one of the cupcakes that had tumbled out of the box, only to pull his hand away when Gavin glowers at him. “Jesus, fine. What’d you find on the security tapes, then?” he asks.

It takes a moment before Gavin stops chewing long enough to respond—even then, Michael’s not sure if he was just pausing to breathe and replied as an afterthought. “It’s going to be a damned tight run,” he says, voice a little slurred with exhaustion.

“That’s not really an answer.”

“Who the hell drank all the beer?” Ryan demands, slamming the refrigerator door closed.

“I told you,” Gavin says through a mouthful of lo mein, “I stayed hydrated this time.”

“Alcohol is a diuretic,” Jack says mildly.

“I should get credit for trying.”

“Not only do you _not_ get credit for trying,” Ryan says, resignedly pouring himself a glass of juice, “but you also get to restock the fridge.”

“Can we focus on the job?” Geoff asks plaintively. “Just for a minute?”

Gavin pushes various food items out of the way and unearths his notebook. Michael cranes his neck. The writing starts off as at least an attempt at being neat, then gets progressively messier down the page. “This place has security tighter than the bloody military base.”

“I’d hope so,” Ray says. “Considering how many times we’ve gotten in and out of there.”

“What are we looking at?” Geoff asks.

“There’s an absolutely ridiculous number of security guards,” Gavin says, still eating. “And they’re on the most rigid schedule I’ve ever seen.”

“Perfect,” Geoff says.

Ray frowns. “That’s...not the adjective I’d use, but okay.”

“It means we’ll know what to expect,” Michael chimes in.

Geoff points at him, grinning. “Exactly.”

“Don’t get too excited,” Gavin says. “There’s also dozens of cameras on constant watch, electronically-locked doors with codes that get changed every week—don’t get me started on the damn vault.”

“Do you think we can pull it off?”

Gavin sets down the now empty container and glances at his notes. He shrugs, stifles a yawn. “Well, yeah.”

“Then that’s all I need to know.” Geoff leans over and presses his lips to Gavin’s cheek, smiling a little. “You look like you’re about to fall asleep just sitting here,” he says. “Get some sleep. You can go over your notes with me later.”

“I’m fine,” Gavin argues.

“You nearly ran into like three different walls just getting from your room to here,” Ray points out.

“I did that on purpose.”

Michael snorts, standing, and reaches out to haul Gavin to his feet. “You’re making me tired just looking at you. Go the fuck to sleep.”

Gavin sulks. “Fine.”

“Try not to run into any more walls on your way there,” Ryan adds. “You have such precious few brains cells left.”

“I have control over my bloody motor functions,” Gavin protests, and then he takes exactly one and a half steps and trips over the coffee table.

Because Gavin is incredibly, incredibly predictable, Michael manages to grab him by the back of his shirt and haul him back upright before he can hit the floor. “Man, comedic timing really likes to fuck with you, huh.” He puts an arm around Gavin and steers him along. “C’mon, I’ll tuck you in like the baby you are.”

“Not a baby,” Gavin mutters, but he’s already leaning against Michael, eyes half closed.

“Sure as shit haven’t developed your sense of spatial awareness yet,” Michael says, pushing Gavin gently into his room when they get there. “I figure that counts.”

Gavin turns as he’s pushed through the doorway and snags Michael by the belt loops, tugging him along as he walks backwards to his bed.

Michael laughs. “Nuh-uh. You’ve been working your ass off nonstop for the past seventeen hours. Even if we did screw around, you’d fall asleep before you’d manage to get off.”

“Don’t want to screw around.”

“Then what the hell— Dude, no,” Michael protests, trying to pry Gavin’s hands off him as he’s pulled inexorably down onto the bed. “ _I_ slept last night. I don’t need to sleep now.”

“Then don’t sleep. Just stay.” Gavin wraps around him like an octopus, smiling a little, and shuts his eyes.

“I’m not gonna stare at the ceiling for hours just because you need a goddamn cuddle buddy! You’re a grown-ass man! You— Fuck you, you’re not actually asleep right now, quit pretending, what are you, five? Get _off_. I have shit I need to do today. _Gavin!_ ”

(Geoff pokes his head into the doorway a couple hours later and grins at them. Michael’s staring resolutely at the ceiling, because fuck his life and fuck his to-do list, apparently; Gavin, actually asleep now, is clinging to him like a fucking—analogies fail him. Like a bullshit clinging thing.

Because he’s not a complete asshole, Michael just mouths _Help me for the love of god_ instead of saying it out loud and waking Gavin up.

Geoff, because he _is_ a complete asshole, just laughs quietly, gets out his phone, snaps a picture of them, and walks away.)

\-----

Nights before a heist always leave them all twitchy-fingered. Jack paces, Ryan fiddles with knives, Ray plays shooter games, Gavin downs enough Red Bull to kill an elephant, and Michael mostly just focuses on suppressing the urge to blow something up just to break the tension.

Geoff drinks and goes over the plan with a repetition that _really_ makes Michael want to blow something up.

“We’ll load up on weapons and ammo tomorrow morning, in case we end up needing it,” Geoff says, _again_ , and then he adds, “Oh, and we’re switching to a new supplier.”

Ray frowns and glances up from his game. “Why? What happened to Sean?”

“Did Gavin try to sleep with him?” Michael asks sympathetically.

“Oh, piss off!” Gavin exclaims.

“Well, did you?”

“ _No!_ ”

“Just the vehicle transport guy, then,” Ryan says, nodding.

“That was _one_ time!”

Jack glances back and forth between them like he’s watching a complicated tennis match, then eventually raises an eyebrow at Geoff, who lets out a long-suffering sigh. “I had to drop Sean. His prices were up over thirty percent when I went in a few days ago to see if he’d be good for what we’d need for this job.”

“Jesus,” Ryan comments.

 “When I called him out on it, he admitted he was only cranking up the price for us.”

“What the hell?” Michael demands. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. Said I shouldn’t be pissed off about it ‘cause we can afford it, anyway.”

“And what’d _you_ say?” Ray asks.

Geoff snorts. “I told him to go fuck himself. He tried to threaten me, said he’d make it so no one in Los Santos would sell us shit. So I put a good word out—no one’s gonna come to him for business anytime soon. He gets his head out of his ass, I’ll think about seeing if he’ll be willing to sell to us again.” He grins. “For a hefty discount, of course. And I’ve got good connections in the meantime.”

“Told you I didn’t try to sleep with him,” Gavin mutters.

“ _So_ ,” Geoff continues, ignoring him completely, “For tomorrow night, we’ve got Jack in the air, Ray and Michael’ll be across from the bank—Ray on a roof, Michael playing wheelman in the alley—and Ryan will be waiting at the bank for when Gavin and I meet up with him in the armored truck.”

“I’m on a murder break,” Ryan cuts in.

Geoff raises an eyebrow at him.

Ryan shrugs. “Gavin said he didn’t think I could.”

“I dared him,” Gavin confirms.

“Great. Glad we’re all still in middle school,” Geoff says. “But, sure. This all goes to plan, you won’t end up having to kill anybody.”

Ryan looks almost disappointed.

\-----

Michael loves the action of a heist, but there’s something to be said about the set up in the few hours before the action starts. Anticipation. It’s like foreplay, he tells Ray as he helps him finish setting up on a roof across the street from the bank.

Of course, that conversation leads to fooling around on the roof, fumbling hands and hot skin and then breathless laughter when Geoff’s voice crackles in their ears over the radio.

“If Charlie 1 and Charlie 2 could keep it in their pants until we’ve finished robbing this bank, that’d be great.”

“If we could actually hurry up and rob the stupid bank, _that’d_ be great,” Ray says, checking the scope on his rifle for the umpteenth time and rebuckling his belt. “I’ve been sitting on this roof for an hour. I’m gonna start taking pot shots at pedestrians in a minute.”

“Why is there a fire truck and bunch of police cars less than a mile from the Union Depository?” Jack asks suddenly.

“ _What?_ ” come Geoff and Ryan’s voices together.

Gavin clears his throat and pauses. His silence somehow manages to sound sheepish. “Well. I may have blown up a gas station just a tiny bit a few minutes ago.”

“Seriously?” Ryan demands. His voice is nearly drowned out by collective sounds of exasperation from everyone else.

“I wanted to test the blast radius on the new sticky bombs!”

“So you blew up a gas station?” Jack sounds deeply disapproving.

“Well, don’t say it like that, you make me sound unreasonable!”

“Good! Because you are!” Michael snaps.

“Michael!”

“The entire heist is gonna fail because you can’t control your fucking hard-on for messing things up!”

“Like _you’re_ one to talk,” Gavin says, and then everyone starts yelling at once.

It’s complete chaos until Geoff finally shouts, louder than them all, “Everybody _shut the fuck up!_ ” When there’s silence over the radio save the faint noise of cargobob blades on Jack’s line, he sighs. “Fuck. Okay. It’s fine.”

“Uh, is it really?” Ray asks.

Geoff ignores him. “We’re not waiting for the police to clear out,” he continues. “That could take hours, and we don’t have that kind of time. We do it now. Maybe we’ll end up with less police on our asses if they’re too busy cleaning up Gavin’s mess.”

“He was _testing the blast radius_ ,” Ryan says mockingly.

“It wasn’t even that big of an explosion,” Gavin protests.

“Not killing you during that first heist was a mistake.”

“ _Ryan_ ,” and that was unmistakably a whine, “don’t be terrible.”

“We still have time to _rectify_ that mistake.”

“You’re on a murder break!”

Geoff sighs again, deeply. “Guys. Please? Everybody into positions.”

\-----

While Gavin hijacks the armored truck with Geoff, he and Ryan bicker incessantly, which means they’ll probably fuck tonight if the heist goes well. Michael laughs at Geoff’s increasingly more theatrical sighs and waits in a car in an alleyway just below the roof Ray’s crouched on, right across the street from the bank. He knows Ryan’s there, in the car park beneath the bank, waiting for Gavin and Geoff to arrive in the truck so they can get started.

Geoff has him only playing wheelman this heist. He’ll wait for Ryan to run out of the bank and into his car after Geoff and Gavin get out with the money, and he’ll drive to the meet-up location where Jack will be waiting with the cargobob. Chances are, they won’t even have to evade the police—chances are, he’ll be able to go the fucking speed limit the whole way there. He knows he shouldn’t be disappointed, but there’s a part of him that always wants to be moving a hundred miles an hour, one hand on the steering wheel, the other wrapped around a hot gun.

But he sits in the car, headlights off, engine rumbling quietly, and waits. There’s an AP Pistol sitting on the center console but he’s not likely to use it, didn’t even bother buying body armor when they went to load up on gear from their new supplier—not as good as Sean, if he’s honest, but if what Geoff said about the guy is true, he can deal with that.

“We’re thirty seconds from the bank,” Geoff finally shouts above Gavin and Ryan’s argument.

“Oh!” Gavin says. “Yeah, we are. Wasn’t even paying attention, sorry.” There’s a pause, and then, “Geoff, you’re going to blow out the windows if you keep sighing so loudly.”

\-----

Getting the money goes off without a hitch, and then it all goes wrong faster than Michael can blink.

He blinks, and as he opens his eyes he hears approaching sirens in the same moment Ray shouts, “We’ve got police!”

Geoff swears, and Michael hears doors slamming and feet shuffling.

“How many?” Ryan asks.

Stuck in the alley, Michael can’t see anything approaching, but Ray says, “Uh.”

“ _How many?_ ”

“Fuck, like ten cars? You guys— You guys gotta get out of there, now or five minutes ago if possible,” Ray says, and Ray rarely sounds nervous but he does right now, clear in the cadence and shake of his voice.

“What the hell? Did someone rat us out?” Gavin asks, his voice pitched up an octave and terrified.

Michael’s hands itch as his pulse starts to rise. Ten police cars is good enough reason to be nervous. Ten police cars— They can handle a _few_ no problem, a few are normal to start, but so many, so soon, even at a bank like this? This shit isn’t normal.

“Go!” Ryan says, and Michael grips his steering wheel white-knuckled until he hears Ray let out a sigh of relief.

“Jack— Bravo one,” Ray amends, exasperated, “Alpha— Fuck it, _Geoff_ and _Gavin_ are headed your way.”

“We’ve got a couple cars on us,” Geoff adds, “but we can lose them. I think the rest are still at the bank. Money’s in the truck. We get away, we’re golden. Alpha two?”

“Fuck,” is all Ryan says, and Michael wants so badly to know what the hell is going on, but all he can see are police cars swarming the bank.

When Ryan finally emerges, he’s got a gun in his hand and a bag slung over his shoulder and he’s running flat out like he doesn’t know there are police surrounding the parking lot and the street, blocking him in. He stops short when he sees them with their weapons drawn and takes a few steps back, right hand twitching towards his own gun.

“Get back in the garage!” Michael shouts, but he can see Ryan shaking his head minutely from across the street.

“They’re already in there.”

There’s a beat’s pause, and when the gunfire starts it drowns out Geoff’s hurried instructions. Ryan’s body twists and lunges for what little cover there is in the parking lot, but it’s not enough, that’s obvious.

Ray’s sniping from the rooftop, but Ryan is going to get shot dead without better cover, there’s no avoiding it. The headlights of a cop car hit Ryan’s face and Michael can see his eyes through his mask, focused like they always are in a gunfight but wide in alarm like they have never been, and that’s it.

“Hang on, I’m coming over there,” Michael says, grabbing his gun from the center console and tucking it into his jacket.

“You’re not wearing any body armor,” Ryan snaps.

“Ryan—”

“Michael, _don’t dare_.”

Michael throws the car into drive. “Ray, cover me.”

“ _No!_ ” Ryan snarls, and everyone’s shouting, but Michael can barely hear them over the sound of his car’s tires screaming out of the alley and across the street. He thinks, belatedly, _I probably should have put on my seatbelt_ as he crashes into a cop car, forcing it out of the way so he can get 00Mogar between Ryan and the police.

It’s a decent plan for the moment, but with the active gun fire and sheer number of vehicles in the lot, they’re gonna have to take down a serious number of cops before it’s safe to push back out and get the hell out of there.

Whatever. They’ll manage, and it’ll keep Ryan alive. Making things up as they go along is basically how they’ve made it this far, anyway.

When Michael stumbles out of the car, bruised to hell but otherwise okay, Ryan is already there, a hand curled in his shirt, shoving him down on his ass by the driver’s side door as bullets fly overhead. Distantly, he hears a body hit the ground, and reminds himself to thank Ray later.

Michael has seen Ryan angry. He knows how Ryan’s eyes go cold and bright like burning ice when he’s gunning someone down. Ryan’s fury, when it’s directed at someone else, is scary.

When it’s directed at _him_ , it’s terrifying.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?” Ryan’s voice is cold and soft and slow, like he has all the time in the world to speak. He doesn’t blink, and Michael feels pinned to the tarmac by his gaze alone.

“I’m trying to make sure _you_ don’t get killed!” he manages to spit back. Ryan’s eyes flash, and Michael is recklessly thankful for the sudden barrage of bullets that hit the car and force Ryan back up and shooting.

“Alpha two sounds pissed,” Ray singsongs. Ryan, in one fluid motion, turns and fires once at Ray’s rooftop. “Hey! Okay, Jesus, sorry!”

“Quit the fucking pillow talk and get the hell out of there,” Geoff barks. “We’ve already made it to Jack.”

“The whole street’s a clusterfuck,” Michael says, kneeling on the tarmac and reloading his gun. “It’s gonna take a minute.”

It takes a bit longer than that, but with the three of them actively shooting, it’s not by too much, and it looks like they might actually be getting the upper hand. The high stakes are terrifying, yeah, but if he’s honest, the adrenaline high he’s getting right now is unbelievable, and at the end of the day, these jackhammer-heart moments are why he does this for a living.

It’s a little harder to get all sappy about it when another squad of police cars pulls up to the bank, though. Happy moment officially shat on by the LSPD—what else is new.

“I’m running out of ammo,” Michael says. Ray makes an unhappy noise of agreement.

“What’s happening?” Geoff asks.

“We’re about to be fucked by the long, hard dick of the law.”

Ryan manages to look completely unaffected, which is both weird and oddly terrifying, probably because he’s always been most dangerous when ostensibly calm. He scans the parking lot, thoughtful, as the cars rush in. “Ray, pack up your rifle. We’re gonna be in the street in just a minute,” he says. Michael stares at him. “Jack, I’m gonna need you to meet us halfway.”

“You got it,” Jack responds uncertainly.

“And Gavin?” Ryan adds.

“Yeah?”

“You said you were testing the blast radius on the new sticky bombs earlier—”

“Oh, _come on_ —”

“Take it easy. I just need you to tell me what the radius is.”

“Uh, bit under twenty feet, depending? Pretty devastating damage, though, mind.”

Ryan scans the parking lot again. “Great, that’s perfect,” he says, and then several things happen at once. Ryan pulls something from his jacket and throws it into the throng of police vehicles, grabs the back of Michael’s neck and pushes him down behind the car, and then crouches down next to him and ducks his head.

And then the whole fucking world explodes.

00Mogar nearly tips over with the force of the sticky bomb blast, its two right wheels lifting up off the ground before they crash back down, shaking the frame of the car. Shrapnel goes flying over Michael’s head and there’s dust thick in the air and in his lungs, and his ears are ringing so loudly he can only hear the sound of his own blood rushing in his ears.

Action movie heroes are the baddest motherfuckers in the world, he decides, because when _they’re_ caught in an explosion, they get up and keep running, but Michael kind of wants to just lay down on the tarmac and gasp for air, or die.

He’s thinking about doing that—because it’s better than what he was thinking about before, which was essentially just _fuck fuck fuck oh god fuck me fuck this shit what the hell_ —when Ryan puts a heavy hand on his shoulder. He’s saying something; the ringing in Michael’s ears makes it indistinct, but the concern on his face and the questioning furrow of his eyebrows probably means it’s “are you okay,” or possibly “are you going to kill me for sort of halfway blowing up your car,” the answer to both being “I haven’t decided yet.”

“Fuck,” is Michael’s actual response, because he figures that covers most of the bases.

He’s no stranger to explosives, but usually he’s dealing with the actual explosion part from a distance, not taking an active role in the whole “holy fuck it’s like the actual _air_ is on fire” bit. That, plus the force of impact from crashing into one of the LSPD’s finest sturdy police cars, and Michael’s not having the greatest time right this second.

He struggles to his feet, looks out over the parking lot, and swears again with feeling.

It’s some weird combination of horrifying and impressive. There are cars and bodies alike in various states of wholeness, and like seven different things are on fire. A few cop cars that avoided the worst of it are retreating, and Michael’s hearing gradually starts to return in time to hear Ray shout above what sounds like ten car alarms that he’s coming down from the roof now and to try not blow him up if they can help it.

“So,” Ryan says awkwardly. “My murder break is, uh, technically over.”

“You owe me fifty quid!” Gavin shouts as Geoff asks, panicked, “Are you guys okay?”

“Ryan just blew up like half the Los Santos police department,” Michael announces, but he’s laughing in a shaken, relieved sort of way, because they’re not dead and they’re going to get out of this. “On the bright side, those new sticky bombs are fucking _brutal_ , so let’s keep getting those.” Ryan’s body language is already relaxing and he’s got the beginnings of a smile threatening to form.

So, typically, that’s when Michael gets shot.

For a second, it feels like being punched. Michael stumbles backward, not immediately understanding what happened, and then pain blossoms in his side, white hot and making him see stars. Ryan’s eyes go wide, then narrow, and he lifts his gun as Michael doubles over, clutching his side.

He looks up in time to see a cop hit the ground, a neat bullet wound between his eyes. Ryan looks absolutely murderous, and he’s eyeing the body like he’s not done with it yet.

Michael moves his hand from his side and it comes away bright red. “Son of a _bitch_ ,” he grates out, hoping he manages to sound more irritated than pained.

“Michael?” If the concern in Jack’s voice wasn’t enough, the complete bypass of code names is enough to let him know he isn’t fooling anyone. Michael’s knees buckle, and he leans heavily against his car. _Fuck_ , it hurts, like someone’s pushing a cattle brand into his side and twisting it viciously. Blood’s seeping rapidly into his clothes and he’s too much of a wuss to prod much at the wound to figure out if the gunshot actually did any serious damage. He grits his teeth so hard he can feel his jaw creaking.

“Is he okay?” Geoff demands. “What the hell is going on?”

Ryan’s already got the passenger side door open. He gets his arms around Michael and helps him as quickly as possible into the car as Ray runs up, clutching his rifle white-knuckled, and climbs into the back seat. “He got shot, lower right side. How close are you?”

“ETA two minutes,” Jack replies. His voice is pinched and too controlled, the way it gets whenever he’s worried but needs to stay focused.

“We’ve got more police coming this way. We’ll meet you by the freeway,” Ryan says, slamming Michael’s door and moving to the driver’s side.

“You almost blew up my car,” Michael protests, because it’s better to argue than focus on how much he wants to be removed from his body. “You don’t get to drive it.”

“Is this a good time to say ‘I told you so’ about your lack of body armor?” Ryan asks conversationally. It’s his usual ‘banter’ voice, but his eyes are cold and he’s gripping the steering wheel way too hard.

Michael pushes him anyway. “Fuck you, I saved your goddamn life.”

Ryan makes a low, growling noise in the back of his throat and takes his eyes off the road to look at him, apparently not caring that they’re tearing down the busy street at nearly ninety miles an hour.

“Ladies,” Ray cuts in, laughing nervously. “It’s okay. You’re both pretty. Can you— Ry, you gotta turn up here, eyes on the road, maybe?”

There’s a moment of tense silence, and then Ryan takes the turn too sharply, making Michael hiss and clutch at his side, breathing hard. He glances down and swears, alarmed, shutting his eyes. “Fucking shit.”

Ray leans forward, sticking his head between the two front seats to get a better look at him. He’s pale and drumming his fingers anxiously. “You gonna be okay, dude?”

“ _No_ ,” Michael groans.

Agonizing gunshot wound aside, he’s bleeding all over the upholstery, and he _just_ got the car detailed.

\-----

He nearly passes out as they load him into the back of the helicopter, too pressed for time to be careful or gentle. Spots swim in his vision and he blinks hard, and everything comes in like snapshots: Geoff’s expression is tight and concerned, and he does a quick and instinctive head count, gaze skipping over the tops of everyone’s heads; Jack takes one look at Michael and reaches for the first aid kit; Gavin’s white as a sheet and looking like he’s a few seconds from vomiting.

“Someone needs to fly us out of here while I get a look at him,” Jack says as he kneels down and starts helping Michael out of his jacket. Michael moves mechanically, struggling to block out the pain, and if he thinks about the blood on the floor of the cargobob or how every breath hurts, he’s going to pass the fuck out.

“I’ll do it,” Gavin says, getting to his feet.

“No!” comes the chorus of responses, in varying degrees of alarm.

“I’ve got it,” Ryan says quietly, clapping a hand on Gavin’s shoulder as he moves past him to sit at the controls.

Michael’s stomach flops as the helicopter rises up sharply, and he bites down on a strangled sound when Jack pushes his shirt up and starts to wipe away the blood.

“Sorry,” Jack murmurs, wincing. “I need to get a better look at this.”

“Does he need to go to the hospital?” Geoff demands.

“Like that’s a fucking option right now?” Michael snaps. “Jack can fix it.” Jack doesn’t say anything, just pushes his glasses up from where they’ve slid down his nose and grabs a fistful of gauze. And Michael’s never been squeamish—that’s always been Gavin’s thing—but when he looks down at himself and sees the bloody mess of his side, his head spins. He drops his head back and it cracks against the wall of the cargobob, but that soreness is a welcome relief from the burning pain that blooms further under Jack’s hands, as careful as they may be.

Ray’s the one who asks the question everyone’s been sitting on. “Where’d all the police come from?” He’s looking at Geoff when he says it, hand on Michael’s shoulder. “That wasn’t first-response shit. They were tipped off.”

“Who would’ve ratted us out?” Gavin wonders. He’s sitting next to Michael and he’s rubbing a thumb along the back of Michael’s hand like it’s a worry stone. It’s part reassuring and part self-comforting, Michael knows, and maybe ordinarily he’d be annoyed with the tactility, but right now he appreciates the smoothness of the pad of Gavin’s thumb and the distraction it provides. He doesn’t look down at what Jack’s doing.

Geoff looks furious in that carefully-contained way of his. “The only outside person I mentioned the heist to was Sean,” he says levelly. “I knew he was pissed off about what I did after the price-raising bullshit he pulled, but obviously I didn’t think—” He shakes his head. “Fuck it, doesn’t matter. He dropped the dime on us, I’d stake my life on it. I’ll deal with him.” He pinches the bridge of his nose and shuts his eyes. “I’ll deal with him.”

“I can’t patch him up with what’s here,” Jack cuts in, leaning back. Michael’s starting to feel really light-headed, tells himself it’s the sick twisting of pain and not because of blood loss, focuses on breathing. “If we can’t take him to a hospital—which I recommend, because I’m not an actual fucking doctor and I think you guys forget that sometimes—I at least need my supplies at home.”

“No hospitals,” Michael grates out.

“Okay,” Geoff says, but he looks reluctant. “We’ll get you back to the apartment.” He starts pointing. “Ryan, you get us back to the apartment. Stand by in case I need you for an emergency pickup. Gav, you help Jack get Michael inside. Ray, you’ll come with me; we’ll meet up with Lindsay and Kdin to wrap this thing up. Jack, you call me if you decide Michael needs to get to the hospital; we’ll figure it out. Michael— Shit, hey, look at me.”

“Don’t feel great,” Michael manages. He forces himself to open his eyes, can’t completely focus on Geoff’s face but knows he’s scowling to hide his fear.

“Michael. Hey, come on, keep your eyes open. You— _Michael_ , you keep your fucking eyes open, kid, or I swear to god I’ll fire you. I mean it. And you won’t be able to get a recommendation out of me, either. I’ll say horrible things, like how you got yourself shot and you bled all over the cargobob. This is a rental, you asshole.”

“Marking my territory,” Michael mumbles. “It’s mine now.”

“Least he didn’t piss all over it,” Ray says reasonably.

“Don’t tempt me,” he says—or means to say, but the words come out dulled and indistinct to his own ears. He hears everyone talking at once, the high, anxious strains of Gavin’s voice and the low, calm timbre of Jack’s, and he thinks he manages to force out, “Fuck, I think I’m gonna pass out,” before unconsciousness swallows everything.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, now we've got a couple chapters of backstory before going back to the heist from chapter one.

Geoff Ramsey’s crew comes together in about as complicated a way as anybody would expect. For Michael, it goes like this:

When he meets Ray for the first time, he’s twenty-two and just moved into a shitty apartment in Los Santos. It’s not the worst, considering what he pays in rent, but even objectively it’s shitty: it’s in a pretty terrible part of town, and the AC seems to break every other week, and Michael is bored out of his fucking skull. He’d been involved in some petty crime before he’d left Jersey—nothing with a crazy impressive take, but interesting enough to keep him coming back—but now he’s playing handyman until he can figure out what  sorts of crime syndicates Los Santos has to offer.

Again, it’s not the worst, but there are only so many weeks a guy can spend all day repairing shit and spend all night in a tiny, hot apartment before losing his goddamn mind.

He’s got his bedroom window open because by some miracle there’s a light breeze today, and he’s sitting on the edge of his bed swearing viciously at a game of Halo that’s gone all fucked up.

He doesn’t really register the sound of police sirens or the clattering on his fire escape until a guy swings through his window into the room, casual as you please, _what the fuck_ , and brushes himself off. Michael turns his head right as he dies on screen— _shit_ —and jumps to his feet, fingers tightening on his Xbox controller like, what, maybe he can club the guy over the head with it?

“What the fuck? Can I _help_ you?”

The guy pauses halfway through sliding the window closed and glances over his shoulder. “Uh, no, I’m good.”

Michael stares.

The guy finishes shutting the window and turns to face him. He’s got a backpack slung over his shoulder and there’s a big hole in his shorts that looks like it was burned there. “Well, I mean, yeah. Mind if I chill here for like twenty minutes?” He gestures vaguely towards the window. “There’s like ten cops out there— You know how it is.”

“ _What?_ ”

He tosses his backpack down on Michael’s bed and goes digging through it—there’s a moment where Michael thinks, _fuck, I’m about to die, this skinny kid is going to fuck me up and I’m just going to watch it happen_ —but just ends up unearthing a thick wad of cash. It looks like a bunch of hundreds stacked together, what the hell? “For your trouble?” he prompts, holding up the money.

Michael feels vaguely insulted. “I don’t want a goddamn _bribe_ ,” he says, folding his arms over his chest.

The guy shrugs and tosses the money back into his bag. “Hey, you’re a better man than me,” he says, grinning. “I’ve got all this cash and I’d still suck dick for a twenty.”

Again, Michael finds himself staring.

“I’m Ray,” the guy adds, apparently taking Michael’s incredulous silence as a ‘make yourself at home’. He pushes his backpack aside and sits down on the bed, then glances at the television. “Oh, sweet, Halo.”

There are sirens outside his apartment, there’s a stranger sitting on his bed, and through his window he can see cops running around outside with their guns drawn. There’s a loaded pistol sitting in his bedside table drawer, maybe six feet away.

Michael sits down and loads his last save.

Because the thing is, Ray looks—well, he looks like a fucking teenager, to be honest, but mostly he just looks harmless. Michael doesn’t know what the hell he’s running from, but there’s no literal blood on his hands, and if he’s honest Michael’s missed how police sirens sound when they’re too close for comfort. “Dude, you’re lucky you didn’t get shot, entering some strange guy’s apartment,” he comments finally, because this is apparently how he’s going to handle the situation.

“Calculated risk,” Ray says cheerfully.

“Yeah? Possibly getting shot dead is worth not getting arrested? Bullshit.”

“Ordinarily, you’d be right,” Ray says, pointing at Michael, “but today, I am one desperate motherfucker.”

“Why _are_ the cops after you?” Michael can’t help but ask.

“Jaywalking.”

When Michael glances away from the screen long enough to raise an eyebrow at him, Ray gives an ‘aw shucks’ sort of smile.

In-game, he dies again, but instead of swearing, he reaches for another controller and holds it out.

“Co-op?” he offers.

Ray grins.

\-----

And that’s basically how they become friends. For as young as he is, Ray’s already pretty well known among the lawbreakers of Los Santos. He gets Michael set up with a few jobs, and the rest is history.

When Michael eventually meets Geoff—when Geoff seeks him out, really—he’s running explosives for a few crews around Los Santos and freelancing jobs on the regular. He’s good at what he does, and word’s gotten out, as it tends to. Geoff approaches him in a diner while he’s trying to choke down enough coffee to punch through the haze of a Saturday morning hangover.

He’s heard of Geoff Ramsey before, in passing, the way high school kids tell stories about graduates. Rumor has it the guy used to be big in a city a few hours north of Los Santos, but as to why he’s here now is all supposition. Michael’s heard everything from wanting to expand his influence to having to skip town after killing some mob boss’s son.

Stories aside, it’s easy to like Geoff. He’s enthusiastic and earnest and he’s got a sense of humor that puts Michael at ease. Maybe it’s because he’s still fuzzy-headed from the hangover, or because of the massive payout Geoff promises, but he finds himself agreeing to run a job with him next week.

Anyone that’s ever known him knows he’s got a problem with authority—that’s why he’s made a point to work alone until now, to work with crews but not _with_ them, not taking orders from any dickish, sneering, smug asshole with a god complex who’s got his fingers in too many pies.

But there’s something about Geoff that makes him willing to give this a shot, for better or worse.

He meets Jack and Gavin a couple days later when he goes to Geoff’s apartment. From the very beginning, Jack comes off very right-hand-man-ish—Michael can tell he and Geoff have history, the specifics of which he can’t really parse but doesn’t dwell on long, and they gently rib each other as the meeting goes on.

And Jack’s great, honestly—he’s guarded at first, but once Michael’s been there a few hours, he’s all warmth. Michael appreciates Jack’s straightforwardness and quiet humor, and all things considered, doesn’t think they’ll have a problem working together.

He hates Gavin immediately.

It’s not intentional. He doesn’t walk into Geoff’s apartment and lay eyes on the skinny guy with tornado hair splayed out on one of the leather couches and think, ‘Ah, yes. This is the one I’m going to despise.’ Even if he _is_ wearing aviators indoors.

Gavin is enthusiastic in a way that grates on his nerves. It’s like someone took a normal human and dialed up every one of their settings just a little too high. He’s just too _much_ , and Michael’s never been known for his patience. But he grits his teeth and grins and bears it because he wants the money that’s coming out of this job, and he wants Geoff to know him and like him even if they don’t end up working together after this, because he’s smart enough to see that Geoff’s gonna be a big name around Los Santos real soon. You work long enough around criminals and you can see power coming when a person’s got drive and organization and intelligence. Geoff’s got all of that and more.

But Gavin makes Michael want to tear out his hair.

They run the job, and Gavin follows instructions, but only in the loosest way possible. He nearly gets Michael killed more than once, and it only takes an hour to decide that he shouldn’t be allowed to drive any vehicle ever. Gavin’s like an annoying little hummingbird, flitting around  and asking Michael too many _entirely fucking irrelevant questions_ while he’s trying to keep the both of them on track. (Have you been to that bar near Geoff’s place? Have you ever had a piña colada? Have you ever ridden a unicycle? What do you think would happen if everyone in the world could read minds? Do you think birds think airplanes are just really really big birds? Do you think house plants know they’re indoors?)

The only halfway positive thing Michael can say about him is that when the job nearly goes all fucked up, Gavin actually manages to save the day in a stroke of reckless brilliance that seems entirely accidental.

The brilliant accidents are apparently a ‘thing’ with Gavin (maybe that’s why Geoff keeps him around), and Michael has no idea how to really feel about him other than supremely pissed off.

Geoff just laughs when Michael admits this to him. “Yeah, that’s normal. Gavin’s sort of a huge—”

“He has a personality that some people find difficult to tolerate,” Jack says carefully.

“He’ll grow on you,” Geoff promises, but Michael’s dubious.

(“And I _did_ grow on you!” Gavin says, months later, triumphant, after Michael mentions the conversation.

“Like a fungus,” Michael mutters, leaving Geoff snorting with laughter and Gavin protesting indignantly.)

\-----

Michael’s opinion of Gavin doesn’t really change until they’ve been working together a while.

They’ve just hit a series of convenience stores. It’s one of Geoff’s more on-the-fly plans—he calls it ‘surprise practice’ but Michael’s starting to think this is just what happens when Geoff’s kleptomania acts up. They probably should have put more planning into it, though, because Michael ends up with two police cars on his ass before he gets even a mile from the store he and Gavin hit. They’re not shooting at him yet, but they will, which is pretty fucking unfortunate because he’s on a motorcycle and he’s not wearing the best body armor for this sort of thing.

“ _Why_ ,” Michael demands, turning a corner so sharply he nearly Tokyo Drifts his way into a goddamn telephone pole, “do we always have to make the getaway vehicle a motorcycle?”

“Motorcycles are cool,” comes Gavin’s voice in his ear. He’d been following Michael on his own motorcycle when they’d left the store, but they split up for the sake of trying to lose the police.

“Yeah? Is _dying violently_ cool, Gavin?”

“Well, no,” says Gavin, sounding a little abashed. “But you _did_ look really cool earlier.”

“Well, gee, that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

“Have you gone past the freeway yet?”

“Yeah, I did just a second ago.”

“I’ll catch up with you, then; I’ve lost the cops.”

A bullet hits the tarmac a few yards in front of him. Well, good for Gavin. “Trigger-happy fuckheads!” Michael snaps. He twists around, one hand keeping the bike steady, the other firing his gun. And maybe Gavin’s got a point: he probably _does_ look pretty cool right now. By some miracle, he manages to blow out one of the cop cars’ two front tires and it spins out, crashing into the other one.

He lets out a whoop of exhilarated laughter and accelerates. “Yeah, fuck you!”

When he faces back around—shit, it couldn’t have been more than four or five seconds—there’s a steel barrier right in front of him. He’s in the air, motorcycle left behind in a crumpled mess of metal, before he has the chance to scream.

The breath is knocked out of him when he lands hard on his back in a forested lot, and he lays there, winded, stunned.

When he realizes he hasn’t actually fucking died in the most stupid way imaginable, he struggles to sit up, buried in the underbrush. His heart is still in his throat, and his ankle’s fucked up, and it feels like he may have cracked a rib if the stabbing pain during each inhale is anything to go by. It’s hard to breathe, let alone speak.

The blind panic of _oh fuck I’m going to die, I’m dead, I’m dead_ yields to a slow burn of embarrassment, of _I nearly died robbing a goddamn convenience store, this is not quite the embodiment of live fast die young I was hoping to go for, what am I doing with my life_.  There’s the usual background noise of the others shouting directions and updates and general chaotic communication in his ear.

Then Gavin lets out a horrified, choked, panicked sound, and Michael realizes he’s caught up to the crash.

“ _Michael!_ ” And there it is again. He’s never heard Gavin so terrified and desperate. “God— Geoff, I think—” There’s the clatter of what must be Gavin’s bike falling onto the asphalt. “Michael, _Christ_ —”

Geoff’s voice now, concerned. “What? What happened?”

Michael forces himself to take a full breath so he can talk over Gavin’s panicked stammering. “I’m fine,” he manages, slowly getting to his feet, weight on his good ankle. “Gavin, I’m _okay_ , it’s okay.”

He hears a shaky exhale just before Gavin comes crashing through the underbrush towards him. The relief on his face is clear as day, even through the tint of his helmet visor, and it’s not the time or place and it’s not fair to Gavin’s probably traumatized psyche, but it’s just—Gavin’s _concern_ and fear and genuine relief ignites in Michael a rush of surprised fondness.

“Michael,” Gavin says, stopping just short of colliding directly with him. He puts his hands on Michael with a fluttering sort of shaky anxiety, touching his shoulders, arms, hands in quick succession. “Jesus, I thought— You hadn’t said anything for a minute and then I saw the bloody _bike_ and I thought you’d _died_ —”

“ _Hey_.” Michael puts his hands on Gavin’s shoulders, and that’s enough to quiet him, calm him a little. “I know,” he says, “I know, but I’m fine, it’s okay, relax.”

“Does somebody want to tell me what the hell happened?” Geoff cuts in. It seems to snap them both back to attention. “Michael, are you alright?”

“I crashed into one of those road barriers and went flying,” Michael replies, sheepish. “Either cracked or bruised the shit out of one of my ribs, and sprained my ankle like a goddamn idiot. I’m fine.”

“Can you get to the meet-up location, or do you need one of us to come to you?” Jack asks.

“Well, my bike’s shot,” Michael says.

“You can ride with me,” Gavin offers, and then he pauses like he’s waiting for Michal to refuse and make some asshole comment.

“That works,” Michael replies, surprising them both.

“Alright,” Geoff says. “Jack can patch you up when you get here.”

“Sounds good.” Michael lets Gavin get an arm around him and lead the way over the steel barrier and back onto the street.

“Try not to crash into anymore fucking barriers on your way here,” Geoff adds. “You’re lucky you didn’t get hurt worse.”

“Well, yeah,” Michael says, “but I looked really cool doing it,” and he grins at the surprised, delighted expression on Gavin’s face.

\-----

He starts spending more time at Geoff’s place.

It’s nice. Like, _seriously_ nice. Like, would-be-sort-of-concerned-about-where-you-got-the-money-for-this-shit-if-I-didn’t-already-know-you-were-a-criminal nice. It’s got more rooms than Michael’s _ever_ seen in any apartment, penthouse or otherwise, and he doesn’t really get why it’s necessary, because Geoff and Jack are the only ones that actually live there.

“Gavin practically lives here, too,” Geoff says when Michael says as much, as though that explains it.

Jack says Geoff bought the place on a drunken whim and then kept it out of spite when Jack bitched him out about it, which Michael can believe.

Geoff offers up one of many guest rooms to him on a regular basis, but he doesn’t really take him up on it until one night when he’s too tired and not sober enough to bother driving back to his own apartment. After that, it’s once a week or more.

It’s easier, Michael tells himself. It just makes sense. They’re running jobs so often now that they’re meeting up constantly, and it’d be stupid to drive back and forth across town all the time—so, gradually, stuff starts ending up at Geoff’s apartment. Shirts. Pants. A toothbrush. His favorite kind of coffee. Some of his games.

Because when they’re not meeting up to talk about a job, they’re sitting in the living room watching shitty reality TV or shouting at video games or paying rapt attention to movies. Sharing takeout. Arguing about stupid shit that Gavin always, always instigates.

It’s weird.

Until it isn’t.

It’s weird until Michael gets used to it, until it’s completely normal, until the word “crew” starts to mean something different in his mind. They don’t do things the way others do, Michael knows, but fuck if they aren’t getting results.

“This isn’t going to work,” Geoff says, throwing down the list he’d been making. “We’re spread thin enough. We’re gonna need another person.”

They’ve got a job in the works for next week—it’s a business move, Geoff says, by which he means they’re gonna take down a series of warehouses to eliminate some competition. Michael doesn’t really care _what_ Geoff wants to call it, as long as he gets to blow shit up with abandon. The amount of explosives they’re going to need for this is actually making him sort of giddy.

“We could put Gavin on the roof for cover before he runs a diversion,” Jack deliberates, but he’s frowning.

Geoff shakes his head. “He doesn’t have the sniping skills for that.” Gavin makes a noise of protest on principle, but doesn’t actually argue, probably because it took him no less than eight frantic shots to drop one guy at virtually point-blank range during a shootout a couple weeks ago. Michael doesn’t really want to know what the outcome would be if they had to trust him to shoot someone from an actual distance.

“So, what? Do you want to bring someone else in? We only have a week to prepare for this,” Jack says.

“That’s enough time to bring someone in. It’s just one job, and I’m not putting it off any longer. We need to cut Fischer down before he gets too confident.”

Michael’s sitting upside down on one of the couches, legs up propped up against the back of it, head hanging upside down off the seat, because Gavin bet him three hundred bucks he couldn’t beat a map in Trials HD while upside down. And because he’s apparently a goddamn idiot, he agreed.

Every time he plays this game, he forgets how fucking terrible he is at it—shocking results of the last fifteen minutes indicate he’s even worse when he’s upside down and all the blood is rushing to his head.

“You want someone who specializes in sniping in particular or just a random guy?” he asks Geoff, and then, “ _Fuck_ a goddamn truck, why would someone even put a pipe here? It’s like someone took a poll, like, ‘Hey, what’s the most infuriating thing I could put on the map?’ and everybody was like, ‘A pipe right in front of a ramp,’ and he went, ‘Awesome, I’m going to do _exactly that_ and ruin everyone’s goddamn day because I’m a horrible person!’ Jesus Christ.”

“A sniper fits the best if we can get one, yeah,” Geoff says, looking over his notes. “That’s going to give us the best advantage if anything goes to shit.”

“I can’t— I _can’t_ — I just spent fifteen fucking minutes trying to get the goddamn bike up Shitfuck Mountain and now there’s this. This map is going to be imprinted on my brain forever. I’m going to have nightmares. It’s going to give me PT _fucking_ SD, and I’m going to make you pay for my therapy, Gavin.”

Geoff’s more patient than most people give him credit for. “Michael.”

He glances at Geoff before trying the checkpoint again, resigned. “Right, sorry. Uh, I actually know a guy that could do it, if you don’t have anybody in mind.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, he’s a friend of mine. Great with a sniper rifle. You— Holy _shit_ , I am mashing the fuck out of the B button. I don’t even care anymore. I’m like those stupid fucking rats in that pleasure button experiment except it’s the exact fucking opposite because it’s filling me with rage.” He scowls at the television, fingers working furiously, and spares another glance at Geoff. “You might’ve heard of him, actually? I dunno if people still call him The Brown Man—”

“You’re _friends_ with The Brown Man?” Geoff cuts in, incredulous.

“Sure as shit.”

“Why didn’t you say that before?”

“Never came up,” Michael says cheerfully.

Geoff rolls his eyes. “I’ve never met him, but people are saying he’s the best sniper in Los Santos. I’ve been thinking about trying to get in contact with him for a few months. You think you could get him on the job?”

“Probably. I’ll give him a call tomorrow and let you know.” He pauses, then starts shouting. “Oh— Oh, shit, shit, yes, come on, go baby go baby go— _Fuck you, pipe! I fucking owned you!_ ” He throws his controller down and tumbles backwards off the couch, stumbling a bit when he stands up as the blood rushes from his head, but no less triumphant for it. He does an uncoordinated victory dance as Gavin groans in disbelief. “That’s three hundred dollars, asshole!”

“I legitimately thought you would pass out before you managed it,” Gavin says, getting his wallet out.

“I am never playing that game again. Like, at least for a month. Until I go Eternal Sunshine of the Fucking Moronic Mind and forget how shitty I am at it— Gavin, don’t you fucking dare draw dicks on my victory money, I will shove that Sharpie so far up your ass you will never find it.”

“This is supposed to be a serious meeting about a _very important_ job,” Geoff says loudly, standing up, but that’s about as far as he gets before Michael goes to tackle Gavin, who scrambles away, yelping, and climbs Geoff like a tree in an effort to protect himself.

Jack laughs as Geoff stumbles around and swears, Gavin perched high on his shoulders. “You should know better by now. When’s the last time we had a serious meeting about anything?”

\-----

Ray seems pretty surprised when Michael calls him and tells him about Geoff’s proposition.

He’d been hesitant to make the call, just a little, because Ray doesn’t really do group work. They’ve worked as a pair before—and they’re a damned good team—and he’ll work _for_ a group, but Michael can count on one hand the number of times Ray has gone out on a job with a crew and worked directly with them. Any more than one or two people, Ray says, and he gets edgy.

Michael gets it. You can’t blindly trust people, not in their business. The more people you have to keep your eye on at a time, the harder it is to stay focused on the job. Ray’s been in enough shitty situations to warrant wanting to work with as few people at a time as possible.

But this is a crew that Michael’s part of, and Geoff Ramsey’s running the operation. That’s more than enough to get Ray’s attention.

“So,” Michael says. “The Brown Man? People still call you that?”

“It’s a Puerto Rican thing,” Ray deadpans, and Michael snorts.

“Seriously, though.”

“Or,” Ray says, laughing, “I mean, people only call me in when the shit hits the—you know what, whatever, never mind. You serious about Ramsey?”

“As a heart attack.”

Ray whistles, sobering. “Moving up in the world. He’s not gonna kill me, is he?”

“Doubt it.”

 “I’ll take it. I’m out of state right now, though. When’s he want me?”

Michael winces. “Uh, tomorrow?”

“ _Dude_.”

“C’mon, it’ll be worth it.”

“You seriously expect me to book a flight, pack my shit, get my ass on a plane, and come all the way back to Los Santos in twenty-four hours? My mom doesn’t even get that much priority.”

“Are you gonna come, or are you gonna be a dramatic asshole?”

“Booking my flight right now,” Ray says. Michael can hear the grin in his voice. “You’re still a piece of shit for putting me on the spot, though.”

Michael makes smooching noises into the phone until Ray, laughing, hangs up on him.

\-----

And, yeah, it’s unfair to put Ray on the spot, but it’s worth it to see Geoff’s expression the next night, when he opens the door to meet The Brown Man and is faced with a short Puerto Rican kid in a graphic tee holding a hot pink sniper rifle.

“Wait, _you’re_ Ray?” Geoff asks.

“That’s what the label on my underwear says. Geoff Ramsey?”

“ _Michael_ ,” Geoff grates out, in a tone of voice that probably means he thinks Michael’s pulling a fast one.

“Yep, that’s me,” Michael confirms as he pokes his head into the front hall, grinning at the way Geoff visibly refrains from sighing in exasperation. He lifts his hands in the universal surrender position. “Test him if you want, Geoff, but he’s the real deal.”

“Am I employing children now? Is that what I’m doing?” Geoff says, apparently to himself. “It’s hard enough keeping track of you and Gavin.”

Ray raises an eyebrow. “Haven’t decided if I’m taking the job or not,” he points out.

“There’s ten thousand dollars in it for you,” Geoff says, holding the door open.

“And by that I meant of course I’m in, sign me up immediately.”

\-----

After Ray meets Jack and Gavin (“Michael’s told me a lot about you,” Ray says, and Gavin gets this hilarious, brightened, hopeful expression on his face for all of three seconds before Ray adds, “I’m not getting into a car with you,” and then his face falls and Michael loses it) and Geoff lays out the plan, they spend the few hours it takes doing prep work and then set out to get the job done.

The plan is to prep all the warehouses with explosives and then blow all the fuckers up at once.

It’s the sort of job that Michael likes best, if he’s honest—straightforward and quick and _loud_.

Jack and Gavin run diversion. Michael and Geoff plant explosives. Ray follows at a distance, giving cover and aid when it’s needed. Geoff’s wary, but hell if Ray doesn’t wipe the skeptical look off his face when shit inevitably goes down.

They don’t encounter any of Fischer’s men until the very last warehouse. Michael’s in the middle of setting up the last of the explosives when the door to some closed-off space in the back opens, and out comes a parade of guys they didn’t think to check for because they’re _real_ goddamn professional sometimes.

At least Fischer’s men are as surprised as they are. There’s a couple seconds of deer-in-the-headlights action, and then Michael and Geoff duck behind crates as the men all draw weapons at once. It’d be funny if there weren’t bullets flying overhead—which, Michael is slowly beginning to realize, could probably be the tagline to a movie about his life.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Geoff says when Michael scowls at him. “How was I supposed to know they’d be here?”

“You were supposed to check,” comes Jack’s tired voice on the radio.

“Hey, show of hands, who thinks I want to deal with Jack’s “I’m more responsible than you and here’s the proof” shtick right now?” Geoff pauses. “No one? Shit, Jack, sorry, but popular vote says you have to shut your goddamn face hole.”

“Quit hiding!” one of Fischer’s men finally shouts, sounding exasperated.

“Excuse you!” Geoff yells back. “I am having a fucking conversation here, you rude son of a bitch.”

“You’re having a _conversation?_ Right now? Your priorities are seriously—” And then there’s abrupt silence, followed by the sound of a body hitting the floor. Fischer’s men scatter, shouting.

“Sorry to interrupt,” Ray says mildly, “but I thought maybe I’d move things along.”

“Nah, good call,” Geoff says, and then they’re moving.

Ray starts taking guys down with a quick efficiency that Geoff actually stops to watch for a second—more than anything, that’s how Michael knows Geoff’s impressed, knows Geoff is going to call him back after all this is over. Michael grins at him with a self-indulgent “I told you so” expression, then heads towards the back of the warehouse, gun in hand, to bring down anyone Ray can’t get to from his vantage point (and he laughs, sometimes, when he remembers the moment they met, laughs to think he ever considered Ray harmless).

As some of Fischer’s men close in, Geoff switches out his gun for a knife with a couple easy, practiced motions, grinning sharp-edged and excited.

Geoff is fucking _brutal_ with a knife. It’s terrifying and fantastic and it makes Michael wonder what he used to do before he moved to Los Santos. Michael doesn’t often get to see him in action with a blade, but now he’s light on his feet and moving with an efficiency that would be graceful, almost, if he weren’t leaving lacerated bodies dropping in his wake. Blood spatters heavily onto the coated concrete.

Ray whistles. “Nice,” he says appreciatively.

“If you could quit creaming your pants over Geoff and help me out, that’d be great,” Michael grouses.

A few men drop around him after a moment, and then Ray takes a pot shot at his feet. He yelps and stumbles back, slips in a pool of blood, and nearly eats shit on the warehouse floor, arms pinwheeling.

Geoff snickers. “ _She’s beauty and she’s grace_ ,” he sings off-key as he sends one of Fischer’s men stumbling backwards, holding his stomach, “ _She’s Miss United States_ —”

“I hate you,” Michael mutters.

He scowls when he hears Jack and Gavin humming the song under their breaths in unison, and Ray’s laughing hard enough to shake his aim.

“Awesome. I’m glad you think it’s the appropriate time for a goddamn musical number,” Michael snaps, taking out the last of the men Ray missed and stalking towards the exit. “I’m blowing the warehouses now, and I hope you all die in the explosion.”

“You’re the one who made us watch the movie,” Gavin points out, laughing.

“You’re right. I hope _I_ die in the explosion.”

\-----

By some miracle, Ray comes back when Geoff offers up another job.

“I like working with you guys,” he tells Michael, shrugging, looking surprised about it himself. “And I could use the security.”

One thing leads to another, of course, and soon Ray’s hanging out at Geoff’s place as often as Michael is.

Sometimes, when they’re all in the living room playing games or arguing over which movie to watch or just dicking around in general, he’ll see Geoff sort of sit back and watch the mayhem for a minute.

He has to wonder if Geoff imagined his life would turn out like this when he moved to Los Santos. Michael knows he didn’t expect to end up here when Ray climbed through his window ages ago, didn’t expect all of them to end up working together and halfway living together when Geoff approached him in that diner and offered him a job.

Geoff seems happy, though, overall, when he’s not actively exasperated—which is admittedly often, given the fact that between the three of them, Michael, Ray, and Gavin usually bring the collective maturity level down a few notches.

Like right now.

“It is literally a miracle that you’ve lived this long,” Ray snaps. “You’re the least observant person in the world. And I’m including Gavin.”

Michael can’t actually remember what he and Ray were arguing about in the first place, but at this point they’re in that happy place of fighting that’s half serious and half fun, so they’ve been rolling with it off and on for the better part of an hour while Jack, Gavin, and Geoff are actually being responsible and productive.

“Says the guy who fell asleep getting a haircut last month,” Michael shoots back. “I’m surprised you bounced back from that one.”

“Aw, fuck you, that’s a low blow.” Ray jumps to his feet. “Dance-off. Right here, right now.”

Michael snorts with laughter. “Are you serious?”

“These hips do not lie.”

Michael watches him do an awkward little dance across the living room to some nonexistent beat and grins. “I don’t think your hips are being completely truthful, either.”

“I’m playing to my strengths. I can’t take you in a fist fight.”

“You can’t dance, either,” Michael points out.

“Yeah, but you suck worse than me.”

“Boys,” Jack calls out wearily. He’s got a tone that before now Michael’s only heard from his mother when she’s trying to get him and his brother to quit attempting to kill each other. “We need your input on this.”

“Sit down and focus,” Geoff says, less patiently.

“You’re not my real mom,” Ray says under his breath, and Gavin cracks up.

Geoff just shakes his head and smiles, the way he tends to now, like he’s fonder every day of this weird little dysfunctional criminal family he’s cobbled together. He grabs Ray by the back of his shirt, hauls him down onto the couch, and sticks a pen in his hand. “Shut up and take notes, Shakira.”

\-----

Nearly half a year goes by before Geoff says anything about bringing in another person.

They’re in a warehouse at the edge of town prepping for a heist that night—checking conditions of the weapons, affirming vehicle locations, running the plan over, the works.

Geoff’s a little wired—he has been lately, in general. Things have gotten pretty big for them.  They’re still a group of five, but they’ve got others working for them on the sidelines, running the odd job, organizing shipments and deals and helping keep things steady. It’s pretty sweet, all things considered. Kdin works his ass off and can get information out of just about anyone. Lindsay knows more languages than anyone Michael knows, does translation work when it’s necessary, and they’ve become pretty good friends over recent months.

So Geoff’s got his fingers in more pies, but it’s meant more work for him—for all of them—and it’s left him a little manic as he struggles to pick up his own slack and get used to how things are changing. Michael doesn’t doubt for a second that he can handle it, but they’re all pulling longer hours to help out where they can.

“Gavin, I need you to make sure the windows of the vans are tinted before the mod shop closes if you haven’t done it yet,” Geoff calls out, taking a gun apart to start cleaning it, cell phone propped between his ear and shoulder; he’s on hold with Jack, Michael assumes.

“I’ve already done it,” Gavin says, popping his head out of the sunroof of his car and looking pleased with himself.

“Great, thanks,” says Geoff distractedly.

“You don’t sound very proud of me.”

“Kudos for your quick response time to the few and incredibly simple tasks I give you.” He ignores the way Gavin starts sulking and points at Ray. “Bring me the rest of the weapons, will you?”

“You got it, boss.”

“Michael, Kerry’s bringing the motorcycles over now. He’s gonna text you when he gets here. Just make sure the doors are open and help him get the bikes unloaded, yeah?”

Michael frowns. “You said we weren’t using bikes for getaway vehicles this time!”

Geoff, typically, just raises a finger hold-that-thought style, focusing back on his call. “Jack? Yeah. I’m gonna send Gavin out to you in a minute so you guys can go load up on ammunition and shit. I think we’re pretty much good, but I want to make sure we check out— Ray, is that a _grenade launcher?_ ”

“I call it the Sit the Fuck Down.”

“We don’t even _need_ a grenade launcher on this heist.”

“Geoff, I don’t want to live in a world where a grenade launcher isn’t part of the approved and required equipment list of every job this crew runs.”

“Put that shit away.”

“You’re stifling my creativity,” Ray complains, but dutifully hefts the launcher up onto his shoulder and totes it back across the warehouse.

Geoff sighs, laughs a little at something Jack says, and hangs up, going back to taking apart and cleaning the weapons on the table. “Alright. Gavin, once you’re finished, head over to help Jack. Michael, I need you to go drop off the vans before that lot gets filled up.”

“You told me to wait for Kerry,” Michael points out, raising an eyebrow.

“That’s— Shit, right,” Geoff mutters, brow furrowing, the way it has been a lot lately, every time they’re stretched too thin. This time, though, he tosses down the gun he’s been working on and leans back in his chair with a thoughtful expression. “What do you guys think about recruiting somebody?”

Michael pauses. Gavin sticks his head out of the sunroof again. Ray sets down his grenade launcher and puts his hands into his pockets, walking over towards the table. “You mean like Kdin and Lindsay?”

“I mean like somebody to maybe join us full time.”

“You have someone in mind?” Michael asks.

“I do, yeah,” Geoff says. “I’ve been talking to Jack about it. We’ve got a bunch of jobs in a row coming up soon, so I figure it’s as good a time as any to get a meeting with him. I figure you guys have heard of The Mad King?”

“Oh, hey.” Ray pushes some of the guns out of the way and sits on the table. “I know that guy.”

Geoff raises an eyebrow at him. “You _know_ him?”

“Yeah, we run jobs together sometimes. I shot him in the chest last year.” Everybody stares at him. He rubs the back of his neck. “I mean, he was wearing body armor, so it’s cool. And he was gonna shoot me first, anyway.” At the progressively more incredulous stares he gets in response, he shrugs. “It was, uh, a misunderstanding.”

“Christ,” says Gavin, emphatically.

“Nah, he’s a good guy,” Ray says. “I mean, not _good_ , obviously, because of the high-stakes crime and, you know, sort of questioning levels of sanity sometimes—”

“Ray,” Geoff cuts in.

“Anyway, yeah, I can get in touch with him if you want?”

“That’d be perfect.”

“But only if you let me bring the grenade launcher on this heist.”

\-----

So Ray sets up a meeting with Ryan Haywood. Michael’s heard shit about him the way most everybody has—he’s unstable, violent, involved in drug pushing and contract killing and torture for pay. Why Geoff’s interested in bringing in this guy, of all people, Michael’s got no idea. And why Ray has a _history_ with him? Michael’s not sure he wants to know.

They’re all in Geoff’s living room, waiting for Haywood to show up and generally dicking around. When the doorbell rings, Gavin scrambles up over the back of the couch, only to sulk when Geoff cuts him a look, frowning, and shakes his head.

“Sit.”

“I want to answer the door!”

“Yeah, and I want his first impression of us not to be ‘Gavin Free on a caffeine high,’ so sit your ass down.” He ruffles Gavin’s hair on his way to the door affectionately enough, Ray trailing behind him.

There’s the sound of the door opening, and then the sound of Ray drowning out Geoff’s greeting by shouting, “Hey, Skeletor!” punctuated by Geoff sighing.

Michael doesn’t get it until the guy walks into the living room behind Geoff and Ray—he’s wearing a dark grey skull mask that’s possibly the creepiest thing Michael’s ever seen in his life.

“Guys, this is Ryan Haywood,” Geoff says. “Ryan, this is Jack Patillo, Michael Jones, and—”

“What’s that weird mask about, then?” Gavin interrupts.

Geoff covers his face with his hands. “And Twenty Questions over there is Gavin Free. Feel free to ignore him.”

It’s impossible to know what expression Ryan is making, but given the fact that he isn’t murdering Gavin right now, he can’t be that offended. “Precautionary equipment,” he says simply. Gavin narrows his eyes at him thoughtfully.

“I told him he can trust you guys,” Ray says, shrugging, “but he’s—”

“Paranoid?” Ryan supplies, but his tone is warm enough.

Ray grins at him. “Hey, you said it, not me.”

Geoff doesn’t seem to have a problem with it. “So, we’re looking at a string of jewelry stores downtown,” he says, sitting down on one of the couches. Everyone else follows suit. “I want us to hit the first couple all together, just to get an idea of how you’ll work as part of a team for later heists.”

Ryan pauses. “Ray didn’t say that this would be more than a one-time hire,” he says carefully. Geoff cuts a look at Ray.

Ray laughs nervously. “Did I not mention that?”

“Probably because he knows I don’t take jobs from crews looking to recruit.”

“Ray.”

“Ha. Uh. This is awkward.”

Ryan holds up his hands. “Look,” he says. “I’ll run this job with you. As a favor to Ray. But I’m not promising you anything more than that.”

“That’s fair,” Geoff replies grudgingly.

He glances at Ray. “And this makes us even now.”

“Yeah, okay,” Ray agrees.

Gavin is positively _squirming_ with the obvious desire to ask forty thousand questions. Michael elbows him hard in the stomach preemptively, and he doubles over, squeaking. Ryan gives the pair of them a look and chuckles quietly.

“For what it’s worth, though,” he says, “I think I’m going to enjoy working with you.”

\-----

Everything goes off without a hitch until they reach the third store. Ray, nimble-fingered, picks the lock in record time while the street around them stays mercifully empty. There’s an automated bell system at the top that lets out a two-tone chime as they push the door open, and that shouldn’t be a problem, because it’s the middle of the night and the store is dark and no one should be there.

The lights from the street cast long shadows off their bodies into the depths of the store. Michael follows their path with his eyes as they file in, and that’s when he notices that there’s a dim light coming from the back.

A rustling sound and the thudding of hurried feet get all their guns up in a hurry.

The guy who comes out from the back room—Michael assumes he’s the shopkeeper—is short and stocky, tie loose around his neck, the top two buttons of his shirt open. He’s holding a watch and what looks like some sort of thin metal tool to repair it. There’s a beat of silence where the guy goes wide-eyed, then he swallows visibly and slowly puts his hands up.

Geoff swears, looking more irritated than anything else. “Fucking great,” he grouses. “Are you kidding me? What shithead is still working at nearly midnight?”

“Commendable work ethic,” Jack mutters.

“This is just not my week,” Geoff complains to the shopkeeper, who continues to look terrified.

“I can take care of it,” Ryan offers.

Geoff’s still got his gun carefully pointed at the guy. He pauses for a moment, then shrugs. “By all means.”

“Don’t,” comes Ray’s voice. He’s looking at Ryan, exasperated, like he knows something the rest of them don’t.

“He knows too much, though,” Ryan says, and it’s hard to tell beneath the mask but it looks like he’s grinning.

“We’re all wearing masks,” Ray protests. “He doesn’t know shit.”

“Nah,” says Ryan, and there’s a definite laugh in his voice. Michael barely manages open his mouth to ask what the hell he’s talking about before Ryan’s across the room, lightning fast. He takes the watch and the tool from the guy’s hands gently and puts them both down carefully on one of the display cases.

Then he fists his hands in the shopkeeper’s shirt and lifts him bodily off the floor, throwing him through a doorway into what looks like an office/break room. The guy lands with a crash, shouting, and Ryan strolls through the door after him, casual as you please. “I’ll just be a minute,” he says cheerfully, shutting the door behind him.

A few seconds of silence pass, and then there’s unmistakable howls of pain.

They all look at Geoff. His eyebrows are raised, and it takes a moment before he visibly shakes off his surprise and jerks his chin towards the display cases. “Let’s go,” he barks. “Clear it out.”

When they all file out of the store, bags full and rattling pleasantly, Ryan’s shirt is a little rumpled and the knuckles of his right hand are red and raw, but other than that he doesn’t have a hair out of place.

(He politely and enthusiastically offers to burn down the store on their way out. Geoff declines.)

\-----

Despite what Ryan said about not joining crews, he keeps coming back, either because he really enjoys working with them, or because of the weird soft-spot he has for Ray (and there’s a definite story there between them, but Michael isn’t Gavin, he’s not going to press for answers they aren’t interested in giving yet), or both.

At first it’s just a job here and there, and then—well, Geoff doesn’t announce anything officially, but it’s impossible for Michael to see them as a five-man team anymore.

Ryan fits in really well, which comes a surprise to pretty much all of them, including Ryan— _especially_ Ryan—as far as he can tell.

And the thing is, it feels right. Once the six of them really start working together, it starts feeling less like a clusterfuck of misplaced criminals and more like a crew. Ryan comes in and he sort of files down all their rough edges. They still make mistakes, sure, still don’t take themselves seriously enough, but the chaos, when it happens, is streamlined and calculated and now they never flinch, never pause. They’re organized and ruthless and they’re really fucking good at what they do.

But things get complicated, as things tend to.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s Gavin’s fault, really—Michael stands by that as much as he stands by the fact that it’s also sort of alcohol’s fault, and that it’s sure as shit not _his_ fault—but Gavin will swear up and down that it’s Ray and Michael who made things difficult, and if Ray’s forced to say anything about it he’ll mention Ryan and Jack, and Ryan acts like nothing was ever wrong at all, and Jack blames Geoff for not stepping in as an authority figure.

Geoff mostly just threatens to fire anybody who brings it up.

But if Gavin’s right—he’s not, obviously, but if he were—it goes like this:

Michael and Ray are in Geoff’s living room playing Battlefront and Michael’s trying to pretend like he isn’t getting his ass kicked into next Tuesday. They’re sitting cross-legged on the carpet, knees touching slightly, and the volume’s up loud because the others are out of town for the afternoon and can’t complain about it. Michael’s a little drunk and Ray’s a little high, and the level is taking approximately eleven billion decades to load because they’re using Ray’s shitty old copy of the game from ages ago that got scratched up in what Ray refers to as a “freak sandpaper accident.”

Michael fiddles with his controller and watches Ray do the same out of his peripheral. He’s been thinking about Ray a lot lately. It was a gradual thing at first—nothing he paid much mind about—but now he can’t go longer than like an hour without his asshole brain deciding to focus on bizarre shit, like how Ray’s hands curl around a controller or how nice the line of his throat is when he tips his head back to take a drink, and he _can’t_ , okay, he can’t let this be a _thing_ and he sure as hell can’t let it become an issue. Not in this business, not now.

Because there are things, Michael knows, that you are not supposed to do in the workplace which are probably universal, whether you’re working as part of a crime syndicate or as an accountant in some stuffy office building.

One of those things you’re not supposed to do is almost definitely “fuck your coworkers.”

It’s complicated enough for all of them right now without making things weird as shit between him and Ray—they’re taking on more jobs than they can almost handle. Word spreads fast in Los Santos, and with all the progress they’ve been making, they have a lot of eyes on them now. More success means more work to keep things going and keep other crews off their backs.

Meaning lately there’s always prep and follow-up work to be done and connections to be made and meet-ups to go to, and none of them have gotten a full night’s sleep in like a week and a half. That’s why Michael is going to keep his damn mouth shut and quit acting like he’s thirteen again with a stupid crush. There’s a time and place for shit like that, and if it’s ever, it sure as hell isn’t now.

But then the game freezes, and the loading music cuts off and plunges them into the sort of complete silence that begs to be filled. Ray sighs and wrinkles his nose in a way that shouldn’t be as attractive as it is, and Michael ignores every rational part of his mind and just goes for it.

“So,” he says, in the same second Ray blurts out, “Listen, dude—” and they both freeze.

Then Michael goes, “Sorry,” right as Ray says, “No, go ahead,” and Michael gives a nervous sort of laugh and insists, “No, it’s fine, what’s up?”

“Uh, nah, it’s just.” Ray gestures vaguely, looking uneasy. He pauses. “I was just gonna ask—”

“What?” Michael demands.

Ray throws up his hands. “Are you my big toe?”

Michael stares at him blankly, faltering, a little concerned for the state of Ray’s sanity and whether or not it is, in fact, stable right now, because now that he really thinks about it, Ray’s had less sleep than all of them over the past few days. “What?”

“‘Cause I’d bang you on every piece of furniture I own.”

“ _What?_ ” Michael bites down on a surprised, incredulous bark of laughter, because as it turns out Ray’s _not_ losing his mind in a blur of sleep deprivation. He’s just a huge fucking dork. “Is that a pick-up line?”

Ray’s cheeks flush pink. “Are you a beaver?”

“ _No?_ What the fuck—”

“‘Cause _dam_ ,” says Ray, dragging the word out, and Michael fucking loses it.

“Dude,” he manages, voice breaking, gasping with laughter.

“Do you have any raisins?” Ray presses on.

“Are you seriously—”

“Michael, please, I’m in the middle of a pick-up line here.”

 Michael struggles to school his expression. “No, Ray, I don’t have any raisins.”

Ray flashes him an impish smile. “How about a date, then?”

“Shut the hell up,” Michael says, grinning, and then Ray’s kissing him.

He’s pressed back with the force of it and ends up with his arms stretched back behind him, hands splayed across the carpet to keep himself somewhat upright. Ray’s halfway in his lap and his lips are warm and hesitant, and it takes a second for Michael’s brain to catch up with what’s happening.

It hits him like heat lightning, hot and electric and relentless—Ray is _kissing_ him, and Michael’s kissing back before he even realizes it, parting his lips and pressing forward and getting a hand curled in Ray’s shirt, using the hold to pull him in closer. It changes in waves, rushed and intense to molasses-slow and careful and back again, and Michael’s never put his hands on Ray like this, with this intent, but it feels right—feels like tension that’s been building unbearably for ages has finally broken like a long night’s fever in the early morning.

It’s quiet save the shifting of clothes and their varied breathing, which is probably why the sound of the front door crashing open may as well be the crack of a gunshot for the way Michael and Ray spring apart mercury-quick, panicked, guilty like kids caught doing something they shouldn’t.

Ray fumbles for his controller and Michael thumbs his lower lip where Ray had bitten it accidentally when the door opened. He figures he must look like Ray right now—wide-eyed and disheveled and red-faced—but Gavin comes into the living room and he’s oblivious.

“You would not _believe_ how shitty traffic is,” he announces, vaulting himself over the back of the couch and landing in a heap on the cushions. “Oh, hey, are you guys playing Battlefront?”

“It froze,” Ray says, a little too loudly, reaching abruptly to reboot the console. “It froze just a second ago.”

Geoff, Ryan, and Jack wander in shortly after and take in the scene. After a moment, Jack raises an eyebrow at Michael knowingly, Ryan looks thoughtful, and Geoff just looks plain amused.

Michael wants to die.

\-----

They don’t really talk about it.

He could say it’s because they don’t have time, that they’re too busy with jobs and when they’re not working their schedules just don’t line up—but that’d be a lie.

It’s just that Ray doesn’t bring it up, which is good, because Michael doesn’t want to bring it up, because if they _did_ bring it up, what would they even say? _Yeah, so, making out with you was great. We should keep doing that and if there are any complicated feelings involved we should never ever examine them_.

It’s easier to just keep hooking up.

Geoff assigns them both surveillance duty and it’s the best thing. They spend collective hours sitting on concrete roofs, chilled by night or slick with rain, doing their job only by half-measures, occasional glances towards their target interluding long minutes of hands everywhere and open-mouthed kisses on every inch of exposed skin, wild as they dare to be on a public roof in a city that’s alive even in its latest hours.

“Hey,” Ray says one night, and then, “dude, seriously, look,” when Michael can’t quite force himself to stop sucking on Ray’s neck.

“Look at what?”

“Someone’s climbing the fire escape.”

That’s enough to make Michael pause and straighten up, if reluctantly so. Sure enough, quiet _clangclangs_ are coming from the building across the street. There’s a tall guy in a hoodie slowly making his way up. “Think he’s gonna try to get in through one of the windows up top?”

“Yeah. Geoff was right. Should we take him out now?”

“Nah. Let’s see if he actually gets in.”

They lean against the ledge, watching the guy’s gradual progress up each floor. Geoff mentioned there might be a break-in at their surveillance site tonight, but this is sort of underwhelming in comparison to what Michael had envisioned.

“He’s moving slow as fuck,” Ray comments.

“It was raining earlier. He’s probably trying to be careful ‘cause the stairs are wet.”

That’s when the guy slips, shrieks, and crashes his way magnificently down two flights of the fire escape, swearing the whole way. He lands in a heap on the landing, groaning loudly enough for them to hear across the street. It’s quiet for a few seconds, and then:

“ _Parkour_ ,” Ray says under his breath.

Michael glances at him, and then they’re both howling with laughter. It’s loud enough that the guy across the street picks himself up and starts looking around wildly, a pistol in his hand.

“Who the fuck’s there?” he shouts, sounding panicked and a little affronted, and Michael’s laughing so hard his cheeks hurt. Ray looks like he’s trying really hard to calm down, but the guy starts stomping down the fire escape and nearly eats shit again, yelping, and then he’s leaning against Michael and absolutely losing it.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Michael wheezes.

“I forgive Geoff for putting us on surveillance duty,” Ray manages, forcing himself to sit up and swallowing down his giggles as he looks into the scope of his sniper rifle.

“Jesus fuck, he’s like one of the criminals from Home Alone.” Michael wipes tears from the corner of his eyes and sits up. “Hey, hurry up and take care of him and I’ll blow you.”

“Yo, eat lead, Wet Bandit,” Ray says, still snickering, and fires.

\-----

There’s a lull in work that lasts about a week.

They’re still _doing_ shit, obviously—Geoff and Jack are buckling down on all the behind-the-scenes stuff Michael luckily doesn’t have to deal with much, like checking on shipments and meeting with people and generally keeping what’s become a pretty impressive crime syndicate organized.

Ray and Ryan are out of town until sometime towards the end of next week doing who the hell knows what. Ryan sort of cryptically says they aren’t “technically” running a job together but that they’ll probably end up crossing paths at some point, and, honestly, Michael’s learned enough by now not to ask too many questions when it comes to Ryan, and Ray just shrugs and says it’s some complicated drug pushing bullshit “but don’t worry about it, man,” which is good enough for him.

Gavin could ostensibly be doing something productive, but to Michael it looks like he’s just lounging around in the living room most days.

And Michael could be using the week to maybe tackle some of the crap that’s been piling up on his non-crew-related To Do list—running shit to the dry cleaners to get the bloodstains out, checking in on his family, buying groceries for the shitty apartment he’s been staying at less and less frequently, following up on some solo-work he’d been offered—but instead he mostly stays at Geoff’s.

It’s actually pretty great.

With their sudden free time, they start spending nights drinking and playing video games. Four days go by like this:

Geoff and Jack spend the day doing organization shit, Michael and Gavin busy themselves with whatever until like six, then they all argue over what to order for dinner. They settle on something eventually, eat, then spend the rest of the night playing games and drinking in equal measure. Pretty sweet system.

Michael likes it when they’re living life at a thousand miles an hour, taking jobs back to back to back, staying up three days straight, jumping out of helicopters and throwing grenades and just generally running for their lives—he loves it.

But he loves this, too.

He wonders what people would think if they could see Geoff Ramsey—big-stakes crime boss of Los Santos—drunkenly swearing at Mario Kart and wearing mismatched socks. Members of Ramsey’s crew, tipsy and surrounded by Chinese takeout boxes, all lying on each other trying to share the couch with the best view of the TV.

Life’s weird.

With Ray and Ryan gone for so long, he thought maybe things would be awkward. It hadn’t taken long after meeting them to figure out that Geoff and Jack were a thing, and that Gavin was vaguely a part of it. But over the past few days, Michael hasn’t felt like a third wheel (or a fourth wheel, technically, whatever), even when the occasional PDA happens.

It’s comfortable. Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it is.

“I’m beat,” Jack finally announces, just a bit after one in the morning. He sets his controller down and pushes Gavin’s feet off his lap so he can stand up, stretching and yawning. “I’m heading to bed.”

“You’re just saying that ‘cause you’re losing,” Gavin complains. “Get back here and lose properly.”

Geoff points his beer bottle at Jack disapprovingly. “Who goes to bed at one in the morning on a Saturday?”

“Babies,” Michael and Gavin respond absently, in unison.

“Or people who have to get up at six to talk to the license plate guy,” Jack says pointedly.

Geoff groans, leaning his whole body weight against Michael as he slumps over in a fit of drunken drama. “I forgot,” he says, sulking. “Do we really have to do that? Who decided we should meet up so early in the goddamn morning?”

“You did.”

“I suck,” Geoff whines.

“Yup. Shouldn’t stay up too much later.”

“I’ll be in in a little bit,” he says, finally getting off of Michael, who’d been straining valiantly for his beer but unable to reach it with Geoff’s weight pinning him against the couch.

Jack stifles another yawn. “Have fun screaming at the Rainbow Bridge.” As Michael sets up another game, three-person this time, Jack walks around the back of the couch the way he has the past four days and presses a tired, tipsy kiss to Gavin’s temple, then Geoff’s—then Michael’s, without hesitating, in what seems to be a habitual, instinctive motion.

He gets about halfway to the hall before he freezes and turns, like he’s just realized what he did. Michael’s face is very warm. They look at each other for a long moment, and then Jack finally gives an apologetic little smile and disappears into the hall. Geoff and Gavin are, evidently, oblivious, already shouting at each other as the game begins.

Michael loses that race.

\-----

He starts thinking about all of them after that.

Maybe it’s because he hasn’t gotten laid in a while, but soon Michael can’t look at any of them for very long without his thoughts going places that make it difficult to hold a serious conversation. To be fair, they’ve been busy—and when they haven’t been busy, Michael’s been more than content to go drinking with the guys or just stay in and watch a movie or play video games with them instead of go out cruising.

And, okay. That’s probably telling enough.

But they all sit down to go over a job and Michael can only pay attention to the line of Ray’s throat when he tips his head back. Geoff’s hands. Gavin’s collarbones. Jack’s arms. Ryan’s mouth.

It’s a _problem_ , is the point, it’s a problem that wasn’t ever _supposed_ to be a problem. It’s an issue that until now hadn’t even been on his list of things to worry would ever become an issue. It’s stupid and complicated.

And then it gets worse.

\-----

He gets back to Geoff’s late one night from a meeting Geoff had him run solo, the names of a few new contacts heavy on his tongue. But the apartment is dark and quiet when he walks in—a text from earlier said Geoff’s downtown working with some big-names until tomorrow afternoon. Chances are Jack’s with him, and Ryan’s out on “personal business” (no one asked too many questions), and Ray and Gavin probably recently went to bed if the controllers and video games cases scattered around the living room are anything to go by.

Michael digs his phone from his pocket as he navigates the dark rooms. He’ll text Geoff now, just to let him know the meeting went well, and they’ll talk about it for real tomorrow.

The screen of his phone stays resolutely black as he tries to unlock it, and he sighs through his nose. Well, that’d explain why he hasn’t gotten any texts for the past couple hours.

It’s not until he’s torn apart half his room looking for his charger that he remembers using the stupid thing in Gavin’s room that afternoon while they’d watched a campy, B-grade horror flick—it’d left Michael snickering at the shitty acting and over-the-top deaths while Gavin laughed nervously and tried to strategically hold pillows in front of his eyes. The charger should be on the wall closest to the door. He can probably slip in and grab it without even waking Gavin up.

That’s the plan, anyway.

It’d be pitch dark in Gavin’s room if it weren’t for the hallway light rushing in and the dim light from the city coming through his window. For some reason it’s the window Michael notices first, the fact that the curtains are open, the way Gavin never leaves them because he says the orange glow of the city keeps him up at night if he doesn’t block it out.

Then he sees Gavin. And Ray.

Both of them at once, because Gavin’s got Ray pressed up against the wall, a knee up between his legs, mouthing messily down from his neck to his shoulder. Ray’s shirtless, jeans tugged down a few inches, waistband of his boxers exposed, and his mouth is wet and red.

Ray sees him first. His glasses are knocked askew, and he reaches a hand from where it’d been grasping Gavin’s hip up to fix them, eyes wide, face red. “Uh,” he says, eloquently, “Gav—”

Gavin doesn’t turn around or let up for a few seconds, just grabs Ray’s hand and pins it against the wall. It’s not until Ray hisses his name again, desperately, that he glances over his shoulder.

His hair’s a disaster and half the buttons of his shirt are undone. He blinks at Michael, surprised, eyebrows rocketing up.

Michael can’t fucking believe this. He says as much under his breath and then, louder, “Shit, sorry,” as he backs out of the room, cheeks warming.

But Gavin beams at him. “Michael!” he says, and he’s drunk—his gaze is a little indistinct, and there’s a blush high on his cheeks, and he just looks...messy, the way he always does when he’s had one too many, though not in a necessarily unappealing way. “Ray ‘n I were just talking about you!”

It’s enough to make Michael pause, one hand on the door. He glances at Ray, who’s still against the wall, though he’s pushing Gavin away carefully now. Ray rubs at his shoulder gingerly, eyes flicking from Michael down to the floor and then over to Gavin, looking exasperated and awkwardly amused (and Michael tries not to wonder how many times they’ve done this before, tries not to let his mind wander down that road, but fuck if the images don’t come in anyway).

He should just leave. Go back to his own apartment and crash there until he can get the image of Gavin’s mouth on Ray’s shoulder out of his mind. “Talking about me?” is what he says instead, because apparently he’s a glutton for uncomfortable situations, and he’s curious, and, okay, maybe a little aroused right now. Sue him.

Gavin somehow looks even more delighted now that Michael hasn’t outright bailed. “About how we’re both quite fond of you, you know.”

“Fond,” Michael echoes.

“You’re wonderful,” Gavin says happily, as though that explains anything.

Michael’s run out of patience. “Right,” he says, gritting his teeth. “Well, that’s _great_ , Gavin. I’ll leave you guys to your fucking conversation.”

He gets the door about halfway closed when Gavin continues, blithely, “So we thought we’d have a lovely little threesome.”

Michael stops with the door halfway shut, fingers tight on the doorknob, and very slowly counts to ten. He yanks the door back open. “What the hell did you just say?”

“We thought it was the most obvious solution,” Gavin says, and he still sounds pleased as goddamn punch. Michael narrows his eyes at Gavin, then looks over at Ray, lifting an eyebrow.

Ray fidgets. Shrugs. Gives him a sheepish little grin. “Well, yeah. We were talking about it.” He cuts a look at Gavin. “Weren’t planning on coming out about it like this, but Drunky McGee over here got a little excited.”

“I call ‘em like I see ‘em, Ray.”

Ray nods and pats Gavin on the shoulder like he’s placating a small child, but he hasn’t taken his eyes off of Michael.

And Michael has a lot of things he wants to say right now, like _how long have you been planning to do this_ , and _are you sure_ , and _how drunk is Gavin, really_ , with a large helping of _how has this become my actual life_.

But, god, he wants to. He wants to.

Things are fucked up enough, anyway. If there was ever an unspoken rule about not screwing around with your coworkers, that ship sailed the fuck away a while ago, and none of them have ever really been wary when it comes to taking what they want.

He steps into the room and shuts the door firmly behind him.

\-----

It’s just him and Geoff and Jack one night, finished with a string of deals they needed to settle before running their next heist. Ryan’s somewhere in the general vicinity of New York, Ray’s visiting family, and Gavin’s catching up with Dan.

Jack’s dozing on the couch and Geoff’s leaned up against him, idly watching the B-grade Sci-Fi flick Michael switched on half an hour ago. He’s on his—fifth? sixth? beer after a few mixed drinks and straddling the line between exhausted-drunk and bad-idea-drunk. Last time he looked like this, he managed to buy a jet and a small yacht before Jack wrestled the laptop away from him.

Michael’s on the other end of the couch, Geoff’s feet in his lap, texting Ray sporadically. (“My mom keeps trying to force-feed me,” is the most recent text Michael received. “Send help.”)

After a few minutes of back-and-forth with Ray, he gets that “someone’s staring at me” feeling and glances up.

Geoff’s watching him, eyes half-masted, with the sort of intensity he usually reserves for gutting someone with a knife, and it makes Michael feel the way he does only when he’s at the business end of a gun.

“Hi?” he says. His gaze drops down to Geoff’s near-empty beer, and he relaxes, grinning. “Oh. You want me to grab you a refill or something, Lazy?”

Geoff doesn’t say anything for a moment. Michael fidgets a little under his stare. “Yeah,” he says finally. He drains the bottle in his hand and sets it on the cluttered coffee table.

Michael pushes Geoff’s feet off his lap and wanders into the kitchen, shaking his head. Geoff isn’t secretive, but fuck if it isn’t hard to tell what he’s thinking when he’s drunk sometimes. He rummages around in the refrigerator before unearthing another bottle of what Geoff’s drinking and mixing a quick drink for himself.

Distracted by sucking down the too-full liquid in his glass as he walks, he doesn’t notice what’s happening on the couch until he’s already well into the room. He pauses.

Jack’s awake now. Michael figures he probably couldn’t have stayed asleep with Geoff kissing along his neck like that.

It’s not like he hasn’t seen them kiss before. They’re together, like, _officially_ , as far as Michael’s been able to tell, and Geoff’s never been particularly hesitant about doing what he wants when he wants, so, sure, Michael’s seen them do shit before.

It just feels like he’s intruding on something private this time. Something _awkward_ now, because Michael’s still watching, pulse jackhammering, hyperaware of Geoff’s mouth and Jack’s neck and the way his blood can’t seem to decide which direction to flood to.

Geoff turns his head and his gaze lands on Michael. He doesn’t look surprised or embarrassed—he looks borderline _amused_. “C’mere,” he says.

Michael’s gripping his glass and Geoff’s bottle so tight he’s surprised they don’t shatter. There’s a small bruise forming on Jack’s neck.

“Michael,” Geoff says.

Michael’s eyes snap to Jack, who raises his eyebrows in a _Well?_ sort of way.

“Here,” Michael blurts, crossing the room in jerky steps and holding the beer out for Geoff. “I’m gonna— I’m exhausted, I think I’m going to—”

“Chill,” Geoff says, taking the bottle. He sets it on the coffee table, then reaches up again and takes Michael’s glass and puts it down too. “Sit.” His tone has the light edge of a command to it.

Michal laughs awkwardly. “Nah, dude, I’ll give you guys some alone time.”

“ _Sit down_.”

Michael’s dick twitches in his pants. “Or I could sit down,” he says mildly, voice a little strangled. He sits, the same couch Geoff and Jack are on, can’t pretend like he’s stupid enough to think Geoff means the other one.

“There we go,” Geoff murmurs, all praise, and fuck, is it hot in here? Is no one else sweating? It feels really goddamn warm, and he can’t _breathe_ , and no one in their right mind could possibly expect him to have any self-control right now, right? A jury couldn’t convict him for being turned on. He’s pretty sure boner juries don’t exist, but if they _did_ , he’d have to be acquitted—

“You’re really drunk,” Michael manages.

“Your observational skills are why I hired you,” Geoff tells him earnestly.

“Geoff, I’m serious—”

“I’m not stupid, Michael.” Geoff’s sitting up now, smirking a little. “And you’re not as subtle as you think you are, you know that?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“He means you watch us a lot,” Jack says. Michael looks at him, opens his mouth to disagree. Closes it. “The way you watch Ray and Gavin.”

“‘Course,” says Geoff, “Ray and Gavin got _laid_.”

“We were feeling left out,” Jack continues, smiling, fingers trailing along Geoff’s forearm.

“I’m sorry?” Michael says, feeling like this is rapidly starting to get away from him—if he ever had it in the first place, which, no, probably not.

Geoff is still giving him plenty of space. He could leave, right now, if he wanted to. Geoff could explain it away as drunken impulse, probably, and they could act like it didn’t happen. “I mean, if you’re _not_ really interested—”

“I’m interested,” Michael blurts. Geoff grins at him. He flushes, swallows, reins himself in. “I’m, uh. I’m interested. I’ve been interested. Fuck, I just— I don’t know.”

Jack looks at him curiously, amused. “What?”

Michael gestures vaguely. “Professionalism,” he says lamely.

Geoff’s laughing. “We left professionalism behind a _long_ time ago,” he says, and drags Michael in by the front of his shirt to kiss him.

\-----

One week, after he’s been fooling around with Geoff and Jack and Ray and Gavin in all manner of combinations for a while, Geoff has him working late night stuff: making deliveries and doing surveillance and other random shit that the Los Santos crime community apparently dictates should be done at like two in the morning.

He gets it—they’re one-person jobs, mostly, and Michael’s good at making himself look unapproachable during surveillance and young enough to seem easy to work with for other crews he meets up with, so people trust him pretty quickly. If anything ends up going all fucked up, he’s more capable than Gavin or Ray of taking care of himself in a close fight.

And he likes the city at night, weird as that is. Once the sun goes down and the white collar workers head home, the city _changes_. You can see the stars pretty clearly right where the city branches off into the suburbs or out on Del Perro Pier after the fairground lights go out. Downtown pulses with an energy that reminds him of home on a good night and gives him a little adrenaline rush on a bad one. So, sure, he’s a good candidate for the little list of chores Geoff tosses at him.

But fuck if it doesn’t ruin his already tenuous sleep schedule.

He meets up with Ryan on the tail end of a surveillance shift for a job coming up (Ryan’d said he was “in the neighborhood,” but since the target’s way the fuck at the edge of town and it’s late as hell, he’s either bold-faced lying or is up to some weird shit, and either way Michael’s not gonna press it) and then they head back to Geoff’s together.

Ryan doesn’t stay at Geoff’s overnight much, but he’s been hanging out there with them often enough, and he keeps his favorite kind of booze in the liquor cabinet. Given that it took like a month and a half of Gavin’s incessant whining to get Ryan to take off his mask in front of them, Michael figures it’s pretty good progress.

So, anyway, they go back to Geoff’s and they get drunk.

It’s not premeditated. It’s just, Michael’s circadian rhythm is all topsy turvey from the past week of night work, so he’s not going to get tired for another couple hours at least, and he does ask Ryan like three shots in if he wants to go home to get some rest, but Ryan says he’s fine and Michael believes it because as far as he can tell, Ryan _doesn’t sleep_ , so, yeah. Drunk in Geoff’s living room.

Michael likes Ryan a lot, but there’s something to be said about Ryan with some alcohol in his system. Like, when they’re drunk, Michael gets dumb and Gavin gets ~~dumber~~ silly and Geoff gets reckless and Jack gets thoughtful, but Ryan _relaxes_.

He gets a little heavy-lidded and he smiles easier and he’s more patient, which is good, because sometimes Michael gets _really_ stupid.

“Look, it sounds far-fetched,” he’s saying, “but I’m telling you, we pick up a tank with a cargobob, we’re unstoppable. It’s, like, flying death.”

“Death for us, you mean,” Ryan says, but he’s smiling.

“ _No_. Death for—everyone. Except us. We could shoot helicopters out of the sky. _Boom_. We’d be _invincible_.”

“I can’t think of a single way for that to play out that doesn’t end with us all dying in a big, fiery explosion. This is a very Gavin-esque idea.”

“No,” Michael says. He presses his index finger against Ryan’s mouth. “You— No. Shh.  You have no sense of adventure. You have the opposite of a sense of adventure. You have—a really soft mouth, dude, what the hell, do you use lip balm or something?”

In some non-alcohol-addled part of his brain, Michael is aware that he’s sort of fondling Ryan’s lips with his fingers. That same part of his brain is sending off little alarm signals saying, “ _RYAN HAYWOOD IS GOING TO MURDER YOU FOR FONDLING HIS LIPS, YOU LIP-FONDLING FUCK. THIS IS WHERE YOU DIE_.”

Unfortunately, that part of his brain is being completely drowned out by the alcohol-addled part that’s like, “Ryan Haywood totally uses lip balm and this is an incredibly normal thing to do with your coworker, this is, like, gathering data to test a hypothesis, this is _science_.”

“Michael,” Ryan says, but it comes out only somewhat intelligibly, possibly because he’s a little drunk too but more likely because Michael is _still touching his mouth_. He’s laughing a little. “Jesus, at least take me on a date first.”

“Ryan, shut up, I’m trying to do _science things_ right now.”

“Science things,” Ryan echoes.

“Yes.”

“By putting your fingers on my mouth.”

“Yes.”

“For Ray’s sake, I hope this isn’t any indication of how you kiss.”

“Excuse you, I happen to be a fucking awesome kisser,” Michael protests, feeling vaguely insulted.

“I’m sure.”

And maybe Ryan doesn’t intend for that to come off as a challenge, but Michael sure as shit reads it that way. To be fair, though, his thought process here isn’t “I want to kiss Ryan,” so much as it’s “My good name is being slandered, therefore I am obligated to kiss Ryan to prove a point.”

Ryan’s lips are about as soft against his own as they had been against his fingers. He pulls back just a little when Ryan doesn’t do much more than freeze up, and frowns at him. “It’s really hard to prove that I’m an awesome kisser if you don’t, you know, kiss back,” he says, because maybe Ryan isn’t aware of how this is supposed to work.

Ryan looks at him curiously for a second and then bites down on a smile. “Apologies,” he says, “go ahead,” and Michael reels him back in, and it’s more successful the second time around, all things considered.

When they break apart to get a few full breaths in, Michael’s on his back pressed against the couch, and he’s got his fingers in Ryan’s hair.  Ryan’s straddling his waist and looking at him like he wants to tear him apart, but in a good way? Whatever, he’s into it.

He realizes, belatedly, that this whole “don’t hook up with your coworkers” thing isn’t really working out, especially if his exceptions to the rule are preceded by:

-Bad pick-up lines  
-Surprise threesome propositions  
-Geoff being really intoxicated and Michael sort of going with it because he’s not going to pretend he _hasn’t_ thought about making out with Geoff and Jack, and he’s only human, okay  
-Proving a point

“So,” Michael says briskly, like he’s not staring at Ryan’s rapidly bruising mouth and like he doesn’t want to arch up against him because they’re positioned fucking perfectly for it. He props himself up on his elbows and licks his lower lip. “There you go. Case in point.”

“Nah,” says Ryan.

 Michael frowns. “Nah?”

“Nah. Not really feeling it.”

“ _Excuse_ me?”

Ryan grins at him, eyes mischievous. “You could try again, though.”

Well. If there needs to be an emotional crisis about hooking up with his coworkers, Michael decides as he pulls Ryan back down, he can put it off until morning.

\-----

He puts it off for exactly three days.

“It’s messed up. _I’m_ messed up.”

“You’re not messed up,” Lindsay says patiently. She lets out a soft, triumphant noise when the speakers of her television let out an end-of-level trill. They’re in her bedroom, playing some shitty indie platformer that was on sale—Lindsay’s kicking Michael’s ass, but to be fair, right now he’s bitching more than he’s playing.

He tosses down his controller and rolls over on her bed, pressing his face into one of the pillows. “I’m not fucking normal!” he protests, voice muffled. “You don’t see any Hollywood movies about chasing five different guys at once.” Never mind the crime and violence part of the equation.

“Maybe what you need to do is drop the idea that you can only love one person at a time.”

Michael lifts his face off the pillow in alarm. “Hey, whoa, fuck that, I never said I _love_ any of them.”

Lindsay visibly restrains herself from rolling her eyes. “Whatever you want to call it, then. I’m just saying, Hollywood movies set the expectation, maybe, but not the rule. The only person who’s saying you have to make a choice is you.”

“You could help me fake my death,” Michael says thoughtfully. “Then I could leave the country and start a new life in Sweden.”

“You don’t know Swedish.”

“I could learn!”

“Or you could just talk to them?” Lindsay suggests. When Michael groans, she cards her fingers through his hair, then smacks him gently upside the head. “I’m serious. You’re being stupid.”

“I’m in emotional turmoil,” Michael complains, rolling over onto his back and giving her his best wounded-puppy expression. “It’s your duty to pander to my bullshit and help me learn Swedish.”

“ _Aldrig i livet_ ,” Lindsay says cheerfully, getting up and walking into her en-suite. “It’s my duty to tell you when you’re being stupid and when it’s time for you to stop whining and get over yourself. Spoiler alert: that time is now.”

“You’re being a shitty friend!” Michael yells after her, and then, bewildered, “Wait, was that Swedish? You know Swedish?”

Lindsay’s dragging a brush through her hair. “Yeah.”

“Why do you know _Swedish?_ ”

“You _know_ Geoff hired me as a translator originally.”

“Yeah, but how many people in Los Santos speak Swedish?”

“Not many,” Lindsay admits. “Still not helping you learn it. The longer you wait to deal with this, the worse it’s gonna get.” She leans in towards the mirror and focuses on applying lipstick.

Michael frowns, sitting up on her bed. “What’s with that? Are you going somewhere?” He forgets, sometimes, that he can’t just monopolize her afternoons unannounced to complain about his stupid problems.

“I’ve got a date in an hour,” Lindsay says, grinning.

“Oh, fuck you,” Michael groans, flopping back down on the bed. He pulls a pillow over his face, and his words come out muffled again. “Fuck you and your reasonable relationship endeavors.”

“You remember Barbara?”

“I hope she turns out to be a serial killer. And not the fun kind.”

“We’re going to the aquarium after coffee.”

“I hope you get eaten by sharks.”

“We’re gonna make out by the stingrays and you’re going to have a bunch of uncomfortable conversations with all your boyfriends. Everybody wins.”

“They’re not my boyfriends!” Michael shouts. Laughing, Lindsay manages to shut the bathroom door just before the pillow Michael flings at her smacks against it.

\-----

Sometimes, especially recently, Michael wonders how they must look to other people.

They’ve gotten a lot more tactile lately, and—not _careless_ , but less restrained. They go out to eat one night, and instead of standing when there’s no more room on the bench outside while they wait to get seated, Ray ends up on Jack’s lap. They meet up with Kdin and Lindsay and a few others, and Geoff doesn’t bother hiding the ring of bite marks around his neck. They go load up on ammunition and Ryan keeps a possessive hand on Ray’s lower back. They meet with a kingpin and Gavin all but hangs off Michael.

Sometimes, though, Michael finds out exactly what people think of them, and he sort of wishes he hadn’t wondered about it in the first place.

“You’re going to get us killed.”

Michael has his back pressed up against a thick cement post. It’s pretty decent in the way of cover—he figures that if there were good places to get into a gun fight, this is probably one of them. But Jack apparently isn’t feeling very optimistic this evening, so Michael peers out from behind the post and fires a few times before sliding down the post to get to eye level with him, since he’s crouched behind a stack of wooden pallets.

“I— Look,” Michael says, “it was a very complicated situation, so I don’t think we can really pinpoint exactly what caused the fight, or _blame_ it on anybody in particular—”

“You punched a crime boss in the face.”

“Right, yeah, I mean if you want to generalize the situation like that, _sure_ , but I would like to point out that I probably didn’t break his nose or anything.”

“You knocked him out!”

“I couldn’t just fucking stand there after what he said, Jack.”

“Well, great. Thanks for defending our honor. My hero. Now we’re gonna die in a shootout.” But Jack’s smiling, if only a little, and Michael decides that it was worth it.

 _It_ being that, okay, maybe Michael sort of cold-clocked a crime boss, and maybe that directly resulted in the guy’s cronies immediately going for their guns.

In his defense, though, the guy had it coming.

He’d looked like a real asshole right from the beginning, but Michael had kept his mouth shut about it because Geoff wanted to get on his good side, make connections, collaborate, blah blah whatever. Michael had been content enough to stay quiet and look relatively competent from the background like the others while Geoff did most of the talking.

Except after Geoff finished speaking, the guy had sneered and said, “Fuck this. I’m not working with a bunch of _faggots_ ,” and Geoff went very, very still.

Michael saw the way Gavin grit his teeth, and how Ray looked shocked for a second and then heartbreakingly resigned, and how Jack’s eyes flashed in a rare show of anger, and how a dozen little microexpressions flitted across Ryan’s face before he settled very carefully on neutral.

And Michael saw red.

So now the knuckles of his right hand are raw, and they’re sort of in the middle of a shootout that is technically his fault, but he’d do it again in a second.

If nothing else, it gives Gavin the opportunity to crash his way into the fight in an unquestionably Soccer Mom SUV Michael isn’t entirely sure how he managed to get his hands on, smashing through the kingpin’s cronies like a horrifying and thoroughly satisfactory kind of bowling, and that breaks up the fight pretty quick.

Later, when they’re all back at Geoff’s place, Michael notices how they center themselves around him, unspokenly, probably unconsciously. They let him take the middle of the couch with the best view of the television, and they all agree to watch the movie he suggests, and the atmosphere’s warm and easy despite the fact that they just got into a gun fight, and Michael’s never really considered himself to be someone who’s protective or possessive, but— Yeah. He’d do it again in a second.

\-----

All things considered, it doesn’t make sense when things start to go wrong.

It _really_ doesn’t make sense that when things start to go wrong, the person Michael calls is Ryan, because somehow Ryan has recently become the sane person in their group, and doesn’t _that_ say something about the situation.

“ _What_ ,” says Ryan when he answers the phone, and Michael has to pause, because while Ryan never answers the phone sounding particularly _cheery_ , he also doesn’t usually answer the phone sounding like curdled milk personified.

“Uh,” Michael says finally. “Hi?”

“What do you want?” Yeah. That is distinctly Ryan’s grumpy voice.

“I was just— Did I wake you up?” he asks, bewildered.

“Yes.”

“Why were you sleeping?”

“Because I am not, despite what Gavin seems to secretly believe, a vampire, and I actually need to put in a few hours here and there to continue functioning.”

“No, I mean, it’s five o’clock, why were you sleeping?”

“Because I’m in Moscow, and it’s one in the morning here.”

Michael frowns. “Why are you in Moscow?”

“I really wanted authentic Lymonnyk.”

“Okay, no one asked for your sarcasm, Haywood.”

There’s a heavy sigh and the sound of sheets shifting. “Michael,” Ryan says, with the measured tone of someone trying very hard to stay patient. “What do you want?”

“Would you believe me if I said I missed your dulcet tones?”

“No.”

Michael grins. “Would you believe me if I said I was calling for phone sex?”

“Not really.”

“What are you wearing?”

“I’m hanging up on you now,” Ryan announces.

“Gavin and Geoff have been fighting for like three days, and it’s uncomfortable as fuck to be around them,” Michael blurts. “I’ve been staying at my own place and it sucks. I was sort of hoping you’d be in town so we could go on a crime spree or something. I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

“Fighting about what?”

Michael wrinkles his nose and lets himself fall back onto his couch, swinging his legs up to hang off the arm. “Literally everything? Stupid shit. Ever since Gavin got back from London they’ve been at each other’s throats.” He toys with a loose thread hanging off the seam of one of the couch cushions and suddenly misses Geoff’s leather furniture with a fierce longing. “And I think Ray’s pissed at me, but fuck if I know why.”

“Geoff and Jack told me to fuck off last time I asked if they wanted to hook up,” Ryan admits. He doesn’t sound particularly bothered by it.

“How can they be angry at you?” Michael demands. “You’re never around! I think I’ve seen you twice in the past month.”

Ryan chuckles. “I think they’re angry at me _because_ I haven’t been around. That’s probably why Geoff and Gavin are fighting. Why Ray’s ticked off at you, too.”

Michael snorts. “Oh, yeah. Ray killed two cops at point-blank range last week and you think he misses me because I haven’t been around. He’s not a teenage girl.”

“I think that’s exactly what it is.”

“We’re all just screwing around,” Michael says, but a growing sense of dread makes him frown. “It’s not serious enough for us to start _missing_ each other, is it?”

“You tell me.”

“This— Fuck no, this is exactly why I didn’t want to start this shit,” Michael says, mostly to himself. “Don’t mix business with pleasure. That’s, like, the number one line not to cross, and we fucking stepped all over that shit. Mexican Hat Danced right across the line. And look what’s happening now.”

“Hey, they’re not the only ones,” Ryan says. It sounds like he’s smiling.

“What are you talking about?”

“You called me—”

“I _called you_ because I wanted to bitch about Geoff and Gavin,” Michael snaps, but the words come out hastier than he intends them to, like he’s being defensive, and he’s _not_.

Ryan is definitely smiling. “You called me because you wanted to hang out, because you _missed me_ ,” he sing-songs.

“Or because I wanted a quick fuck. Careful with that ego, Haywood. And, also, because it bears asking: why the fuck did you leave the country?”

Ryan pauses. “I had work?” he says, but it comes out like a question.

“In Moscow.”

“I— _Look_ , like you said, tensions have been sort of high, and I didn’t want to get caught up in it. So when I got offered a job, I took it, just to get away from the bullshit for a little while.”

“You pissed off Geoff and Jack,” Michael says accusingly.

“I think I made the most rational decision possible, given the circumstances.”

“You went to _Russia!_ ”

“And I’ll be back by the end of the week. Do you think you can last that long? Should I call you every day? Send letters?”

“Fuck off.”

“I can try my hand at poetry.”

Michael scowls. “Ryan, I swear to god—”

“ _Wait for me, my love_ ,” Ryan bursts out passionately, barely controlling his laughter, and Michael hangs up on him.

\-----

As irritating as Ryan was about it (though Michael figures maybe he deserved it after waking him up in the middle of the night), he probably isn’t wrong.

Geoff always gets sort of prickly when any of them are out of town for any significant length of time, and Ray does tend to get quieter whenever Michael’s been away for a while. Gavin’s always that much more tactile when he gets back from England, almost clingy in a self-reassuring way, and Jack will passive-aggressively assign shitty jobs to whoever hasn’t been around much that month.

Fuck, even Michael noticeably feels the loss when they’re not all working together at the same time. He’s aware that he’s happiest when they’re all in the same room.

The work that they do sort of lends itself to travel, but it’s never really been a _problem_ before. Recently, though, they’ve all been away a lot, for one reason or another, and other than Geoff and Jack, no one’s really been staying at Geoff’s place. It’s like they all simultaneously realized just how often they were spending their nights there and started making an effort to be elsewhere, if only to reassure themselves that they _could_ —or maybe that’s just Michael.

But it seems like all they’ve managed to do is get collectively pissed off about it, and it feels like it’s been ages since they’ve all been under the same roof, since they’ve run a job with all six of them together.

Ryan comes back this weekend, though. Maybe everything will sort itself out. (Blind optimism and actively ignoring problems, Michael is beginning to realize, are basically their M.O.)

\-----

Everything does not sort itself out.

It’s not working.

It hasn’t _been_ working, but Michael’s been willing to ignore it, more or less, until now.

Now Gavin’s drunk and Geoff’s getting there fast and they’re both screaming at each other.

Now Ryan’s nowhere to be found and Jack’s in the wings somewhere, waiting for the fight to burn itself out so he can try to deal with the aftermath if he’s still got it in him.

Now Michael’s sitting in one of Geoff’s guest rooms with Ray, and they’re sharing earbuds with the sound cranked up about as loud as they can tolerate, but it’s not drowning out the break in Gavin’s voice or the angry/hurt crack in Geoff’s.

Michael wants to get the hell out of there, because this is torture, but the only way out is right past Gavin and Geoff, and he’s not interested in getting caught in the crossfire.  So he leans against Ray and grits his teeth and waits it out, envying Ryan for slipping out just before things got really heated.

When it’s over, the front door slams a second after Geoff’s bedroom door does.

“What we’ve got here,” Ray murmurs into the ensuing silence, voice dropped into a Southern drawl, “is failure to communicate.”

“I think it’s more like ‘we’re communicating way too fucking hard,’ but thanks, Cool Hand Luke.” Michael pulls his earbud out and after a moment he hears Geoff’s door open again, then the faint sound of Jack’s voice, soothing and too careful. Michael chances a look at Ray and they hold each other’s gaze for a few seconds too long.

He sighs. Forces himself off the bed and onto his feet. “Yeah, I’ll deal with it,” he says in response to the prompting Ray didn’t have to verbalize. Ray nods once, thankful, then puts both earbuds in and spins the dial up on his player as he reaches for his DS.

As drunk as he is, Gavin didn’t get far. Michael pushes open the door to the all-hours diner about a block from Geoff’s place and sees Gavin’s tornado hair in the back corner booth. He nods at the waitress clearing one of the tables, orders a coffee for Gavin, and makes his way back, sliding into the opposite seat when he gets there.

Gavin’s got his head buried in his arms. “Go ‘way,” he mutters, without lifting his head.

“What was that about?”

“Go _‘way_.”

“No,” Michael says, and he takes a second to congratulate himself for sounding patient when all he really wants to do is walk out or punch Gavin in the face.

“Piss off, Michael,” Gavin says, finally lifting his head. His eyes are glazed over and red-rimmed and he can’t seem to put any heat into his words.

That’s fine, because Michael’s got enough heat for the both of them. “No, fuck that. What the hell was your plan? Sulk in here the rest of the night and leave the city in the morning? No, don’t fucking look at me like that, I know what you look like when you’re planning on running away. You think leaving is gonna fix this shit? You think leaving is gonna do anything except fuck Geoff up big time? Fuck us _all_ up big time?”

“Michael—”

“Look, we’re all fucking idiots for thinking we could just keep doing this shit without talking about it. This is _stupid_. It’s a stupid thing to get in the way of everything. Thanks,” he says, suddenly friendly and polite, to the waitress who shows up with a mug of coffee. She gives him a nervous little smile and disappears. Michael pushes the cup in front of Gavin. “Drink this.”

“I don’t—”

“ _Drink_ this, shithead.”

“Jesus, fine,” Gavin says, sulking, and does.

“You’re gonna sober up and Geoff’s gonna sober up, and we’ll deal with this. And so help me god, Gavin, if you try to skip town, I will find you and I will rip off your dick and beat you with it.”

Gavin chokes on a mouthful of coffee. “Is Ray alright?” he manages after a minute of coughing.

Michael shrugs. “He’s plugged in. Probably will be until tomorrow. You know how he gets.”

Gavin’s looking guiltier by the minute. A part of Michael thinks, relentlessly, _good_ , but the other part knows it’s not Gavin’s fault—or at least it’s all their faults equally. He decides to take pity, at the very least to get Gavin on his side. Getting everybody to talk isn’t going to be a cake walk, but for some reason he’s forcing himself to take charge of this shit.

Michael just wants his goddamn heart to stop aching.

“It’ll be okay,” he says finally.

Gavin laughs, harsh and bitter. “Yeah,” he says. “We’ll see.”

\-----

It turns out that he doesn’t actually have to take charge of anything.

He figures Jack finally chewed Geoff out, because after a couple of awkward, uncomfortable days, Geoff calls a crew meeting. He says it’s due to an _intradivisional relations mismanagement_ , because he thinks he’s funny.

So they all gather in the living room with no small amount of grumbling, and Geoff stands in front of them the way he does when he’s trying to convince himself he’s a Serious Leader talking about Serious Things, but he’s tense as all get-out and would probably be making a run for it if Jack wasn’t there.

“Okay,” he says finally, “Jack was thinking—”

“Geoff,” Jack interrupts, looking at him pointedly.

Geoff folds his arms over his chest and frowns. “Jesus, okay, fine. Jack _and I_ were thinking, you know, maybe we should really make this place into a base of operations.”

“Meaning?” Michael asks.

“Meaning you guys move in.” There’s silence. He crosses his arms tighter, like he’s being prematurely defensive. “Look, you guys already stay here like four days a week when you’re in town anyway, and we’ve got enough space, and it’s a bitch when I have to hold off on a job because I can’t get a hold of one of you. I’m not saying you have to stay here all the time, obviously, that’d be a goddamn headache. But it makes more sense than your motel-hopping and shitty apartment rentals, and anyway, I’ve had about enough of all the drama bullshit.”

“Drama bullshit?” Ryan echoes.

Geoff lets out a huff and sits down heavily on the couch, reaching for his beer and grabbing it by the neck. “The stupid fucking elephant in the room. How we all act like little bitches whenever someone’s out of town longer than a week. And how like maybe if we don’t actually say we’re all fucking each other, we can pretend the situation’s normal and we’re normal and everything’s all goddamn Pleasantville.” He tips the bottle back and drains it in a few deep swallows. “But the only thing that’s happening is we’re all getting pissed at each other.”

“Oh,” says Ryan, and for some reason he looks amused. “ _That_ drama bullshit.”

“And I could get sappy as shit,” Geoff presses on, “and say how much I care about you fuckheads—”

“Aw,” says Gavin. Jack snorts.

“But that’s not what this meeting’s about. So here it is: we all need to get our heads out of our asses, like, collectively, because I’m not letting this get in the way of business. So, assholes, I’m in charge, and I say—”

“ _I’m in charge_ ,” Michael mocks, snickering.

“I’m the boss,” Geoff insists, but he’s smiling. “And I say we all saddle in together—hell, it’s probably for the best, anyway. If we’re gonna all be fucking each other, we’re gonna own it.”

“Inspiring words from Geoff Ramsey,” Ray says under his breath.

“We’ll be the weirdest goddamn crew in Los Santos and nobody’s gonna give us any crap about it because we’ll _own_ their asses. Let’s fucking Brady Bunch this shit and have one big, happy—”

“Family?”

“Orgy.”

Ryan grins. “I don’t think you’ve ever watched the Brady Bunch.”

\-----

Somehow, it’s as simple as that. It takes a few weeks to adjust, and it’s not like they settle into some happy domesticity, but it’s enough to get them all to sort of pull it together. Things mellow out.

For as ‘mellow’ as things ever get, anyway.

And Michael’s aware that they’re all operating on what’s probably an unhealthy level of codependency and dysfunction, but he figures with the frequent murder, arson, and high-stakes theft, that’s the least of their problems.

So it’s nice, after all the bullshit, to crowd in the living room amidst empty pizza boxes and beer bottles and soda cans, notes for a new heist scattered across the coffee table, making enemies in the best way over a game of Mario Party.

Geoff comes in right at the end of a particularly fucked up round that gets them all shouting; Michael’s sitting in the middle of the living room floor on top of Gavin, who’s trying to reach his controller to finish his turn, and Ryan’s got a laughing Ray thrown over his shoulders, threatening to toss him off the balcony for stealing one of his stars from him. Jack’s filming the whole thing on his phone, expression more amused than he probably means for it to be.

It’s only marginally less chaotic than the time they tried strip poker and the game totally derailed once they found out Gavin was wearing three pairs of pants and layer upon layer of socks.

Everyone freezes when Geoff’s heavy-booted footsteps approach. “For fuck’s sake,” he comments, eyebrows rocketing up. “Remind me why I had you all move in again? Biggest mistake of my life.”

Ryan lets Ray down sheepishly. Gavin stretches for his controller again, laughing, and Michael finally grabs his wrists and pins them against the carpet with a sudden forcefulness that makes him cut off with a surprised whimper.

There’s a beat of silence, and then everyone’s gazes heat at once.

“Never mind,” Geoff says after a moment, shrugging off his jacket and moving into the living room, expression predatory. “Best decision ever. Go me.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And (after like a month, whoops, end of semester kicked my ass, you know how it is) we're wrapping it up with the last chapter; back in present-day now with the aftereffects of Michael getting shot, etc etc.

When Michael wakes up, the first thing he sees is Jack.

Michael’s in his bed and Jack’s sitting at his bedside in a big, soft chair, head bowed down towards a novel open on his lap. Michael blinks, fuzzy-headed, and looks down at himself—and, sweet, not dead, that’s a plus, except for how he’s probably going to have to deal with getting chewed out five separate times about the importance of body armor. If he’s lucky, maybe they’ll wait until he feels less like his head is full of cotton balls.

He’s propped up a little with pillows and the covers are pulled up to his waist; he’s shirtless, and thick bandages are covering his side. He runs his fingers over them gingerly.

Jack glances up and shuts the book, smiling tiredly. “Look who’s finally up.”

“Hey,” Michael croaks out. He swallows thickly and braces his hands against the bed, starting to push himself up. There’s a slight tugging sensation where he assumes stitching is pulling at his skin.

“Hold on,” Jack says, putting a hand carefully but firmly against the center of Michael’s chest. “Give yourself a bit before you go walking around, okay?”

“There go my plans to break out into interpretive dance.” Michael lets himself fall back against the pillows and sighs. There’s pain he’s only faintly aware of, dull at the moment but getting sharper the more awake he becomes. He prods at the bandages again and gives Jack a narrow-eyed look. “You didn’t harvest any organs while I was out, did you?”

That’s enough to get him a laugh, and some of the concern ebbs from Jack’s expression. “Only the non-essential ones.”

“Gonna sell ‘em on the black market?”

“Yeah. I know a guy.” Jack turns to Michael’s bedside table and grabs a full glass of water and a couple pills, then hands them over. “Take these.”

“Pain meds?”

Jack nods.

“Just two?”

Jack gives a small laugh. “Two’s plenty. They’re, uh. They’re pretty strong.”

“Heavy narcotics,” Michael says happily, popping them in his mouth and chasing them with a few much-needed swigs of water. “That’s how I know you love me.”

Jack rolls his eyes and takes the glass from him, setting it back on the table.

“So where’s everybody?” Michael asks.

“Geoff and Ray got the job all finished up not too long ago,” Jack says. “He sent Ray back here, so he should be around soon. Geoff’s going to,” and he pauses here, “take care of things with Sean, and then he’ll come home. Ryan’s, I don’t know, sulking somewhere?”

Michael raises an eyebrow. “Sulking?”

“Sulking, brooding, whatever, you should probably talk to him so he doesn’t go on a murder spree.”

“It’s not my fault he’s acting like an ass.” And it’s not. He doesn’t know what Ryan’s deal is, and he’s honestly not looking forward to having a goddamn heart-to-heart about it—especially since, as far as Michael knows, Ryan has never had a heart-to-heart in his life. “Where’s Gavin?”

Jack doesn’t have to respond, because suddenly there’s the tell-tale _thudthudthud_ of Gavin coming down the hall. It’s stupid—Gavin’s ridiculously light, but he walks heavily enough to wake the dead sometimes.

Gavin pokes his head into the doorway, brow furrowed with exhaustion and concern, and then he sees Michael and beams. “You’re awake!”

“I’m awake,” Michael confirms, and then he yelps when Gavin launches himself onto the bed, missing Michael by inches. “Jesus! Watch it, idiot!”

Jack, who’d gone wide-eyed while Gavin was in the air, relaxes when he sees that no one is actually hurt and no stitches have been reopened. He gets up, leans over, and drops a kiss into Michael’s hair. “I’m gonna call Geoff and see how things are going,” he says, heading for the door and leaving them alone.

They bicker a little in a familiar, comforting way, and then Michael shifts in a way that irritates his stitches and hisses in pain, struggling to get back into a comfortable position.

Gavin, for once, goes quiet. Once Michael settles back down and the pain ebbs, he lays on his side, propped up on one elbow, and thumbs the rough white fabric of Michael’s bandages and the skin around it, itchy red from adhesive.

Michael watches him. Gavin’s subdued; his eyes are cast down and his lips are chapped and he’s needed a haircut for like two weeks, and it’s easy to be too brave and too confident in the middle of a rough job, Michael thinks, because the fear always, always comes after, once the adrenaline rush crashes, while they’re licking their wounds and counting ten fingers and ten toes and six bodies total, all living, all breathing, all wired and bleeding and shaken.

But Michael smiles and cards his fingers through Gavin’s hair and says, “Jack gave me probably illegal pain meds that should kick in soon,” because they make it through each day one way or another.

Gavin’s chest rises and falls with a sigh, but there’s the faint hint of a smile. Michael will take it. “Probably illegal?”

“Gonna be high as fuck in a minute, I bet.” Gavin laughs and Michael rests his head back against the pillows, which is when he sees Ryan—and, yeah, Jack was right, that’s definitely sulking behavior—in the hall in front of the doorway. “Hey.”

Ryan steps forward, leans against the doorframe. “You’re up.”

“Yeah. Well, Jack’s got me on bed rest like a baby, so not really ‘up,’ but yeah. Conscious. So that’s an improvement.”

Ryan nods. “Good.”

“You done acting like a dick?”

Ryan raises an eyebrow at him. “Seriously?”

“Well,” Gavin starts, “you _were_ sort of— Right,” he says meekly when Ryan scowls at him. “I’ll just— I’ll leave you guys to it.” He climbs off the bed with an apologetic glance at Michael, then slips past Ryan into the hall.

“Man, what the hell is the matter with you?” Michael demands.

“What’s the matter with _me?_ ” Ryan replies, incredulous. “I’m not the one who ran blindly into a gunfight without any fucking body armor on!”

 “Oh, _fuck_ you,” Michael spits. “What, should I have sat and watched you get shot dead by cops? Because that’s what would’ve happened.”

“I could have handled it.” Ryan’s voice is dangerously soft.

“Oh, yeah, you had it totally covered. Your blatant terror was obviously a clever fucking _ruse_. God forbid the great Mad King need any help, right?”

Ryan takes a step into the room, eyes cold, hands curled into fists. “Don’t start.”

Michael barks out a laugh and hauls himself out of bed, heedless of the pain that blooms in his side or how the room spins. “What, are you gonna hit me? We gonna fight right now? Is that what’s happening?”

Ryan blinks, looks Michael up and down, and then sighs, reaching a hand up to rub his face. “God. No. C’mon, lay back down. You’re going to hurt yourself.”

“No, screw you, I don’t want your pity.” Michael takes a few unstable steps towards Ryan. “C’mere. I will bare-knuckle brawl this shit. Fight me, asshole.” The medication, he reflects, may be kicking in, especially if the sudden fuzzy-headedness is any indication.

Ryan mostly just looks exasperated now. “Jack’s going to be pissed off if you reopen your stitches,” he says, closing the distance between them and gripping Michael’s elbow to lead him back into bed.

“You’re just scared I’ll kick your ass,” Michael mutters, but he settles back down.

“That’s it, exactly.”

“Don’t patronize me. I will fuck you up.”

“I know.” Ryan sits down on the edge of the bed.

Michael watches him, half-lidded, mind swimming through a fog that’s thickening by the minute. “You _were_ being a dick, though,” he feels the need to point out again. Ryan frowns at him, then lets out a long breath and falls back onto the bed, legs hanging off the edge.

“I know,” he says finally.

“You needed help.”

“I did.”

Michael pauses. “I _was_ sort of reckless,” he says generously.

Ryan snorts. “Little bit, yeah.”

“You didn’t have to get so pissed off, though.”

“You could have _died_.”

“You could have, too!” Michael snaps, because maybe Ryan isn’t aware that he’s mortal. “You get that, right? You were in fucking danger?” It’s fine to act like you’re untouchable in this business, but despite all his bravado, Ryan bleeds just like everyone else.

Ryan presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. “That’s different.”

“Is it? You wanna explain that to me, then? Because it sounds exactly the same to me.” Ryan grits his teeth and sits up like he’s about to leave the room. “Hey, no, come on. I’m serious. You get that the risk and sacrifice thing is a part of working as a team, right? It’s shitty sometimes, but we need to have each other’s backs.”

“I have your back.”

“Yeah, but you don’t ever rely on any of us. Not when shit gets serious.”

“I’ve been in this game a lot longer than you, and I’ve been doing it by myself,” Ryan says sharply. “I made it a long time without anybody getting hurt trying to help me, okay?”

“You’re not working alone anymore!”

“And look at how fantastically that’s working for me! Now I get to worry about one of you getting hurt or _dying_ on my behalf.”

That’s about when Michael realizes all this brooding and sulking and angsty, somewhat psychopathic anger stems from concern. Which is somehow both weird and endearing. It’s weirdly endearing.

“I’m not _weirdly endearing_ ,” Ryan protests, at which point Michael comes to the conclusion that he’s probably been speaking out loud, which is. Yeah. Not his finest moment. He’s going to have to work on that.

“You’re failing,” Ryan says patiently.

Michael swears, then shakes his head like he can clear it that way. “Look, all of us have to worry about somebody dying. It’s, you know. Part of the whole shitty package deal.”

“I’m not used to this,” Ryan mutters. “I can’t do this group work shit. I’m getting sloppy. I’m too invested.”

“Too invested in what?”

Ryan gestures vaguely. “This. All of this shit. You guys.”

Michael stares, then does his best to sit up and look serious. “What, you don’t think we’re fuckin’ _invested_ in you, too?”

Ryan’s not looking at him. He shrugs.

“Seriously? Man, what do you want me to tell you? You can lone wolf it up as much as you want, but you’re part of a goddamn crew and that _means_ something.” Michael gestures in a way that he hopes looks dramatic or meaningful but probably just comes across as _Hey, look, I have no control over my motor functions!_ “You can, you know, you can check out but you can never leave or whatever. And all that aside, we do actually fucking like you, like, as a person.”

“Oh, really?” Ryan says, and the involuntary smile that accompanies that makes Michael think he’s probably a little loopier on pain meds than he thought he was, but he presses on anyway.

“Yeah. Being around you is like being shot in the face with a cannon, except the cannon shoots, like, puppies and kittens or someshit.”

Ryan raises an eyebrow. “Being around me is like getting a face full of puppies and kittens,” he paraphrases, deadpanning.

“Fuck yes it is,” Michael says. “Kittens with creepy, violent tendencies.”

“Is this supposed to be making me feel better?”

“Dude, I got shot for you, I could have _died_ , fuck your feelings.”

Ryan snorts. “Remind me why I like you again?”

“World-renowned scientists are reporting that it’s because you have really, really bad taste,” Michael says solemnly.

“Can’t deny that,” Ryan says. “I do sleep with Gavin.”

“Oi!” comes an indignant voice from the hallway. Michael and Ryan glance at each other.

“Get in here, stupid,” Michael calls out. Gavin emerges from the hall, looking a little sheepish. “How long were you standing there? Who fucking eavesdrops on somebody’s conversation?”

“Babies,” Ryan says dutifully.

“Sorry,” Gavin says, not really looking sorry at all. Michael just rolls his eyes and gestures for him to come over. Brightening, he crosses the room and climbs completely unnecessarily over Ryan to get onto the bed, accidentally kneeing him in the groin as he does so. “Oh, whoops.”

“Your sense of spatial awareness is so impaired,” Ryan mutters, wincing, and shoves Gavin aside to sit against the headboard next to Michael. Gavin, sulking, stretches out along the foot of the bed. Michael worms his feet under Gavin’s shirt and presses them against his side, making him yelp.

Yawning, he turns his head to press his face against Ryan’s shoulder. “Anyway,” he says, shutting his eyes, “you can apologize for being a dick by acting as my human pillow. Whatever the hell Jack gave me is knocking me right the fuck out.”

“You already have pillows,” Ryan points out. “You’re lying against them right now.”

Michael reaches up blindly and puts his hand over Ryan’s mouth. “Hey. _Hey_. Shh. Pillows don’t talk.”

Ryan sighs through his nose and shifts around a bit to get comfortable, though obligingly doesn’t say a word. He’s stiff, all hard edges, the way he always is in moments like this, like he thinks he’s a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit, or doesn’t know how to fit. But it takes him less and less time to gradually soften and relax now than it used to, and Michael counts that as a victory in the end.

It’s quiet for a while, just long enough for Michael to hit the very edge of unconsciousness, and then approaching footsteps rouse him.

“How’s he doing?” he hears Jack ask quietly.

“High as a motherfucker,” Michael reports, not completely intelligibly. Eyes still closed, he hears Gavin laugh, and then there’s a bit of shifting around before the mattress dips as Jack sits. When he cracks an eye open, he sees that Jack’s got his book open again in his lap, and Ryan’s leaned over against him to read along. Gavin’s playing idly on his phone, shirt still hitched up from when Michael had his feet against him.

He dozes.

Ray comes in next, but Michael doesn’t realize it until his voice wakes him again. “Job’s taken care of,” Ray murmurs. “Geoff should be home in like an hour.” A pause. “Is, uh,” and Ray’s voice wavers. He coughs. “Is he doing okay?”

“You gonna sob at my bedside The Young and the Restless style?” Michael mumbles. He opens his eyes in time to see Ray grin at him. He looks edgy, concern making his eyes tight, his smile a little strained, but still genuine.

“That depends,” he says. “Am I gonna find out that you’ve been replaced by your evil twin brother in four episodes?”

“Are you serious? I _am_ the evil twin brother.”

“Yeah? Where’s your evil mustache, Lorenzo?”

“Geoff stole it.”

Ray snorts, then studies the bed for a moment. There’s a bunch of shifting around as Ray secures a place for himself; he and Gavin end up sort of curled around each other, and Ryan and Jack bring their knees up to make room for them. It’s been a while since more than three of them at a time have shared a bed.

It’s nice. Sort of weirdly domestic and right on the cusp of being too cramped, but nice. Michael realizes that crowding around his bedside while he’s hopped up on enough pain meds to kill a medium-sized dog and nursing a gunshot wound is about as sensitive as they get. He’d make a joke about having to get shot more often if it meant getting everybody in bed together, but he figures this probably qualifies as ‘too soon.’

He yawns and nods off again before long to the sounds of the pages of Jack’s book being turned and the faint clacking of buttons on Ray’s DS.

He’s roused again later by Geoff’s exasperated voice gradually prodding him into consciousness. “...a custom-made bed, big as dicks, specifically so we wouldn’t all end up elbowing each other in the nads trying to share a normal one. And yet here you are.”

“I didn’t want to move Michael,” Jack says, sounding a little embarrassed. Michael opens an eye.

“He needed moral support?” Gavin chimes in.

“Don’t look at me,” Ryan says. “I was the only other person here at first. The bed grew crowded around me.”

“Peer pressure,” says Ray, not looking up from his DS.

Geoff sighs. Michael sits up slowly, neck stiff, and turns towards him. He looks tired, and there’s a spattering of blood across the collar of his shirt, but he smiles when Michael looks at him. “Hey, look who’s not dead.”

“Like I’d let the fucking LSPD off me.”

“Damn right.” Geoff cards his fingers through Michael’s hair, a certain amount of pride in his expression, then glances over at Ryan. “And has Ryan gotten his head out of his ass, or should we call in a surgeon for that?”

Ryan splutters. “That’s— Okay, I’m officially categorizing this as bullying. I’m getting bullied. Do we have an HR department I can complain to?”

“Ryan, if we had an HR department, they’d have a lot worse to deal with than a bullying complaint.”

“He’s talking about sexual harassment,” Ray stage-whispers.

“And murder,” Gavin chimes in. “And robbery. And—”

“I feel like ‘murder and robbery’ are probably not traditional Human Resource Department issues,” Jack cuts in.

“I think the _police_ deal with murder and theft,” Michael says, grinning. “You know, hence the whole LSPD fiasco, and the getting shot part—” He breaks off when he gets five identical ‘yes in fact it _is_ too soon to start joking about that’ looks. “Uh. Anyway. You get shit wrapped up with Sean, Geoff?”

To his credit, Geoff’s expression doesn’t change. “Basically. That’s nothing you need to worry about, though,” he adds cheerfully. “You’re out of the field until Jack decides you don’t pose a risk to yourself. Or, you know, you pose about the normal amount of risk to yourself. We’re not expecting any miracles, here.”

Frowning, Michael goes to protest, only for Geoff to cover his mouth with a smile.  For a few seconds, he tries talking anyway, then gives in and does what he’d intended to do the second he saw Geoff’s hand coming at his face.

“You’re disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself,” Geoff says, nose wrinkled, wiping his hand on his pants. Michael just sticks his tongue out farther and wiggles his eyebrows. “Alright. You guys enjoy your little nap club. I’m gonna shower and make a few phone calls to get the heist wrapped up.”

He gets five expressions in varying degrees of expectancy.

Geoff pauses. “No,” he says, folding his arms over his chest.

“Geoff,” says Jack, smiling.

“Are you fucking me? No. There’s no room. And. I have shit to do. Not all of us have the luxury to loaf around after a heist, you lazy assholes.”

“Geoff,” Gavin wheedles.

Geoff throws up his hands. “There’s no _room_.”

“Not with that attitude,” Michael comments.

“There is literally no— Jesus, okay, _fine_ , move over, you fucks.”

\-----

They celebrate Michael’s healing process with a crime spree.

This is because the second Jack gives him a halfway clean bill of health, Michael goes, “Thank fucking god, let’s go _do_ something,” and Geoff whips up a half-baked scheme in ten minutes, bless his goddamn heart.

Given the nonexistent prep time and virtual lack of a plan, it goes about as smoothly as anybody would expect—which is to say, not at all.

They’re split up, Geoff and Jack and Ryan in one car and Michael and Gavin and Ray in the other.

Gavin’s at the wheel—which, actually, that’s an incredibly idiotic decision on all their parts, _why_ is Gavin driving? how did they let that happen?—and Michael’s standing up in the car, top half sticking out of the sunroof, grenade launcher in his hands ( _Ray’s_ grenade launcher, which he is _borrowing_ so he needs to be _careful_ with it, as Ray very helpfully reminds him every three and a half minutes or so, “I mean it, dude, you lose it or scratch the paint job or a bird fucking shits on it, I’m gonna piss on everything you love”).

Ray’s in the backseat, leaning out the left side window and shooting with what would be a lot more precision if Gavin _wasn’t at the wheel_.

“Whoops, missed that turn,” Gavin calls out cheerfully, and then the car does a damn near 180 and Michael’s next shot misses spectacularly, and, well, he never liked that convenience store much anyway.

Ray goes crashing from one end of the backseat to the other. “ _Why_.”

“Sorry, X-Ray.”

“ _Sorry_ — No, what the fuck, I’m taking the wheel, you’re a human disaster and you’re going to kill us.” Still shooting, Michael feels Ray brush past his lower half as he climbs from the backseat to the front.

“I can do it!” Gavin protests. There’s a yelp followed by a scuffling sound, and the car swerves.

“Gavin’s driving?” comes Geoff’s voice, incredulous, and then Jack’s: “Which one of you decided that was a good plan?”

“I think technically Gavin and Ray are both driving at the same time now,” Michael says.

“I wouldn’t really call that a _better_ plan,” Ryan comments.

“Well, I mean, I’d like to point out that, one: this is less of a plan and more of a moment of impulsive stupidity, which, if you expected more out of us, that’s your fault; and two: this has nothing to do with me, I am literally just along for the ride here, so if you want to bitch someone out, let it be the fucks at the wheel.”

Geoff’s response gets drowned out entirely when the car swerves again, Michael nearly gets thrown from the fucking car, the breaks squeal, and Ray hollers, “ _OHHHHHHHHHhhhhhh_ we’re fine, never mind, we’re all good.”

Michael takes a moment to collect himself, now having watched his life flash before his eyes three or four times in the last hour—you’d think there’d be a lot more sex and explosions in the highlight reel; maybe he’s doing something wrong. “Ray.”

“Sup.”

“This is getting a little too Fast and Furious for my delicate sensitivities, so if you could maybe—”

“You got it.”

There’s the sound of Gavin protesting again, more scuffling, and then the car finally straightens out and speeds up. This shit probably isn’t the best thing to be doing when he’s only halfway healed up and still popping pain pills, but it’s infinitely better than staring at the wall all day flipping channels or playing the same games over and over.

And he knows this is the guys’ way of making a gesture, of saying “glad you’re not dead because that would suck major dick, we’ll let you do something fun for your sacrifice and because we care about you.”

They have never been particularly romantic, any of them. It’s never been candlelit dinners and late night walks on the beach and early morning slow kisses—it’s been video games and booze and not nearly enough couch space. It’s been grit and guns and sarcasm and on-the-run motel bathroom quickies. It’s been “This is your birthday and we’re celebrating by robbing a bank and participating in a high-speed chase and high-jacking a police helicopter, and, hey, if we live we’ll order pizza later and stick a candle in a store-bought cupcake.”

Police sirens fade once they get out on the highway, smooth sailing from there as they head for the outskirts of the city, Gavin whooping excitedly when Ryan’s car slides into the lane next to them.

Ray starts to laugh in a way that Michael’s come to realize means he should probably have his seatbelt on. He slides back down into the car and fumbles with the belt as Ryan and Ray goad each other into a race, cars speeding up and slowing down until Ryan’s car goes zipping down the busy interstate, Geoff and Jack’s laughter following Ray’s swears.

Michael sticks his arms out the sunroof and flips them off—flips off the interstate, the city, the world—laughing, exhilarated, as Ray hits the gas and they tear down the highway.  There’s a few bags of cash on the floor of the backseat, thrown in haphazardly enough that some of the bills are loose, littering the floor and getting picked up by the wind. He watches a bunch of twenties flurry around the car and then out the window, and it doesn’t matter, it’s not even _about_ the money anymore, if it ever was, if it’s ever been about anything more than power and what they can get away with, all six of them, together.

And so they’ve never been particularly romantic, but here’s the thing: he’s got five people that would die for him, kill for him, burn a city down for him.

He doesn’t want to sound sappy, but he wouldn’t trade this life away for anything in the whole fucking universe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OKAY. There we go, all finished. I've actually got so many deleted scenes filed away that didn't end up fitting. SO MANY. I know this is hard to believe, given that this entire fic is essentially made up of only loosely-related scenes comprised mostly of dialogue (because I have a major and not well-disguised writing boner for banter), but it's true. The drunk strip poker comment was a full scene at one point. And there was a bit with Ryan and Gavin mutually seducing each other in their weird, wonderful ways.
> 
> I also had the story of how Geoff and Jack met, and the pickpocketing story of how they met Gavin, and the one where Ray meets Ryan and they start working together. But stuff happened before Michael met any of them, so it didn't really fit with the point-of-view narrative I had going on.
> 
> What I'm getting at here is I'm almost certainly not done dicking around in this universe, so stay tuned/strap in/my sincerest apologies.
> 
> Also, if you do the tumblr thing, I've got a writing/inspiration blog here that I'm hoping to start utilizing and which you can check out if that interests you: http://anarchetypal.tumblr.com/

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [All The Difference A Closed Door Makes](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10764297) by [Waffle-o (XylB)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/XylB/pseuds/Waffle-o)




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